


BioLock

by b00mgh



Series: Twelve Days of Ficmas 2019 [10]
Category: BioShock 1 & 2 (Video Games), BioShock Infinite, Miss Sherlock (TV), Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Calm Down Hugs, Dead Mary Morstan, Eurus Holmes Ships It, F/F, M/M, Mind Control, Mrs. Hudson Ships It, Multiverse, Tears, Violent Panic Attacks, another partially prewritten work, as in the bioshock kind, babies as a form of coping, i am spoiling y'all, the plot is clay and I am a toddler in art class, they go together so well, when do I write anything else
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2020-04-30
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:07:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 24,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21925690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/b00mgh/pseuds/b00mgh
Summary: There's nothing for anyone at the bottom of the sea, except maybe a girlfriend, and maybe like ten or fifteen adopted children, and maybe, just maybe, a portal leading to another dimension where you, your new girlfriend, and your adopted children can find your multiverse doubles high above the clouds!Or: Wato is underwater, she meets her Sherlock, but by escaping from the shithole that is Rapture with kids who Don't Deserve This Shit (tm), they end up in Columbia and encounter John, who has recently broken his Sherlock out of a giant statue, and now they're doing their best to get the fuck out of there before the homophobes come to kill them all and further brainwash the children.
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, Sherlock | Futaba Sara Shelly/Tachibana Wato
Series: Twelve Days of Ficmas 2019 [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1570897
Kudos: 6





	1. Atlantis in the Atlantic

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [[BioLock]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9525290) by [b00mgh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/b00mgh/pseuds/b00mgh). 



> To all of the dedicated fans who read, lamented the loss of, and even returned for the promising message of hope from my previous iteration of this work, BioLock, I want to say thank you so much! You guys are mostly the reason I gave this baby a reprise! Your support means the world to me!

They told me, "You're special. You were born to do great things." 

You know what? They were right.

People scream, not for long. Most of the people on the plane were high-class socialites or businessmen; cropped gowns and pressed suits don’t do well for swimming. Especially when you’re dumb enough to try and save that carry-on luggage instead of dislodging a flotation device from under your seat. The small pad of foam doesn’t do much in the way of keeping me on top of the Atlantic, but I survive when I hit the water and that’s really all I needed from the thing. I can swim just fine, I didn’t dress in a cropped gown and I didn’t try to save my carry on– if I had one.

Did I have a carry-on bag?

What was I doing on that plane?

Nevermind, swimming is more important. The flotation device has left me for the tender kiss of fresh air and it’s all I can do not to sigh at myself for letting go of it. My arms and legs push me up, which is easy to identify because that’s where the fire is and where all these shoes and bags and necklaces are falling from. I allow myself a few seconds to appreciate the oxygen I have earned at the surface, and to feel the ache of an old injury in my shoulder, and scowl at my surroundings. There is fire clinging to everything that can float, which cuts off almost every escape option except one slim path, behind which I can see the tail of the plane I was (probably) on before and a disused lighthouse. My obstacles have outlined my direction pretty damn clearly and I head for the lighthouse. The whole thing is stone, which feels blessedly solid under my feet as I emerge from the freezing waves of the midnight Atlantic. There really isn't much to note on the exterior, just a stone cylinder with a dead light at the top, and two sets of stairs into ocean on either side of a pair of doors. The doors are what really catch my eye: rusting gold with a stoic figure chiseled in angular silence; also, they're already open. That's strange because no sounds of life remain anywhere around me. If there isn't a person, there shouldn't be an open door. 

Isn't this lighthouse a little too conveniently located?

Nevermind, it's either go in or stay outside, and I'm freezing cold outside the water without so much fire so close by. 

No lights appear to be on, but when I step inside the doors shut ominously behind me and a few lights flicker to life– although obviously in a less grandiose way than was intended by whoever made the entryway. The effect is instead eerie as a display is illuminated in front of me. 

A man’s stern face looks above, with a blood-red banner hung beneath it reading “No Gods or Kings. Only Man.” I frown thoughtfully. Unlike the outside door, these two things remain untouched by elements and exactly as they were intended to be viewed by tourists like me, minus the shit lighting. 

I follow the dusting red carpet underfoot around the display and down a half-flight of stairs, then down another flight, and just as I'm beginning to wonder how far down this increasingly poorly lit trail goes I am presented with something akin to a submarine. 

This vehicle is spotless– very conspicuously– and has only a single lever– also conspicuously. Something like instinct draws me into the sub and something like habit brings my hand down on the lever. It isn't like there's anything for me on the surface anyway. 

Is there?

Who even am I?

Nevermind, I lookout the window on the sub. My view includes a descent below the ocean's surface. Various markers show in gold “10 Fathoms” and “18 Fathoms”. I should be shocked, but I'm not. This all feels comfortable, familiar. 

Why does this feel familiar?

What am I doing?

Nevermind, the window is more important. The view is blocked by a projection, slightly aged but working just fine. 

The image projected is of a man, the same man from the lighthouse entryway, but less stern and more relaxed. He's sitting at a desk in a nice suit– like the businessmen from the plane, but a few steps up. He says, in a voice that sounds like he drinks champagne with every dinner and orders someone to order it for him, “I am Futaba Kento, and I'm here to ask you a question. Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow? 'No!' says the man in Washington, 'It belongs to the poor.' 'No!' says the man in the Vatican, 'It belongs to God.' 'No!' says the man in Moscow, 'It belongs to everyone.' I rejected those answers; instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose... Rapture, a city where the artist would not fear the censor, where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality, Where the great would not be constrained by the small! And with the sweat of your brow, Rapture can become your city as well.” I scoff, but hold a dead silence when the scratchy projection wipes away to reveal my apparent destination. 

It’s a city, all skyscrapers and bright fluorescent lights and billboard ads and pedestrians. It’s also underwater; skyscrapers come up and fall down from piped metal bases; fluorescents are the only garish illumination this deep underwater; billboard ads waver with the water’s distorting current; pedestrians are less anthropomorphic and more gilled, even a small whale skirts the city edge. 

Nothing in my mind questions the possibility of this, of an Atlantis in the Atlantic. To me the more unnerving thing is the possibility of life without jellyfish outside the window or watery abyss all around. 

How does one survive surrounded by sunlight?

Why does this feel like a homecoming? 

Nevermind, the sub has ceased motion in my reverie, but the door stays shut. 

I want to curse the inconvenience, but realize the blessing of it when two figures are lit up by flickering lights. One backs away from the other, he has no discernible features besides a workman’s shirt because his back is turned to me. He cowers away from the other person, babbling appeasing nonsense. 

“I'll leave, I didn’t mean no trespass! Just don't kill me!”

I can see why, the other person isn't really so much a woman as some bloated and twisted and modified version of what could have probably been human many years ago. She has hooks attached to the outside of her wrists and she tears the poor man in front of her to pieces before moving to my sub. 

“Is it someone new?” she hisses, her gaping mouth a mess of gums and scar tissue with the occasional tooth dug in unnaturally. 

I stay silent, still. She jumps straight up with strength that is about as human as her appearance. No one does that in one broken stiletto. No one. There is the gut-wrenching sound of metal-on-metal, but eventually the thing must decide it can't break through the sub and jumps away, sprinting off down a hallway I can't see.


	2. Splicing Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She's got no name, no memory, and not one single goddamned clue what's going on here, but she doesn't have a lot of options, hence the plot. What she does have is one (1) brain cell, which is enough to question if she should be doing drugs if those drugs are what made everyone go batshit crazy.

A radio crackles and that makes me jump a little, because that's a noise that is deliberate and aware of my existence, which I had comfortably assumed no one was. 

“Would you kindly pick up the radio?” a honeyed voice asks. A little bewildered and a lot curious, I locate a short-wave radio on the wall of the sub and tuck it into my belt. 

“Hi there,” the voice greets and I figure it is a woman, mid thirties to early forties, speaking softly and clearly. “I don’t know how you managed to survive that plane crash, but I’m not one to question providence.” She has a point, how _did_ I survive? Sure I had my flotation device but I couldn’t have been the only one. Nevermind, people are more important. “My name is Irikawa Mariko– you can call me Mariko-san,” the voice adds hastily. “If I have any power in it, I’m going to keep you alive. Let’s get going, you need to get to higher ground.” After a pause where you can hear the voice steady herself with a breath, she continues tremulously, “Now, take a deep breath and step out of the bathysphere.” I hesitate, thinking that is a really strange thing to call the apparently-not-a-submarine I am in. “Go on, I won’t leave you twisting in the wind.” The suggestions are becoming increasingly ludicrous: where is high ground when the whole city is underwater?

Why can’t I remember anything before this bathysphere?

Nevermind, I’ve got to keep moving. I wouldn’t want that crazy monster of a woman with the broken stilettos to find me before I find her. I step out of the bobbing bathysphere and onto the stone steps descending from where it’s parked. The room is cavernous, empty, surrounded by glass that reminds you of your isolation and mortality, with water just beyond, and a stony floor, which has another one of those age-dirtied red running carpets leading the way. A venomous giggle echoes from somewhere I can’t see, around a bend and maybe up some stairs. The air stinks of mildew, and it’s probably the carpet, or the leaks dripping water at an algae-producing pace in the riveted seams of those giant windows.

Mariko-san tells me “We’re going to need to draw her out of hiding, but you have to trust me.” I’m dubious, but she seems to be the only sane person around and her voice is so soft anyway. Most people with soft voices are actually consistent with that description.

Aren’t they?

Shouldn’t I not trust Mariko-san?

Nevermind, immediate safety is more important. I follow the red carpet, since it’s the only actual direction to go anyway, all of my plans so far have felt pretty laid out for me. But I don’t really care about how much free will I have, and that’s almost more disconcerting than the changing scenery around me.

Signs litter the floor, protest signs. They say “Futaba Doesn’t Own Us!” and “Rapture Has Fallen!” and “Stop the Secrecy! Tell Us the Truth!” Lights flicker intermittently before falling entirely dead, luggage and blood clutter the floor, the place is– obviously– deserted. 

Except for that creepy woman who whispers “I’ll wrap you in a sheet…” from somewhere on the ceiling. 

“Just a little more,” Mariko-san murmurs. I step in front of a small doorway, it seems to open upward and is stuck half-closed by debris. The crazy woman is in between me and the door. I’m prepared to fight my way through that hag, because frankly that seems the familiar course of action.

Wouldn’t that get me killed?

Why do I feel like I’ve lived my whole life to encounter this creepy thing?

Nevermind, the fight is more important. I square my shoulders but see a bright green spotlight illuminates my foe and she is riddled with bullets even as she tries in vain to climb a wall. “Thank goodness I made it in time!” Mariko-san cries triumphantly. The little turret-bots she appears to be controlling fade into the shadows and fly away.

I take a few wary steps forward to the stuck door. “Would you kindly find a crowbar or something of a similar nature?” Mariko-san asks, I search the ground as she continues. “Those, um, those _splicers_ sealed the doors before they…” her voice cracks into soft sobs, “I’m sorry, before they _killed_ Johnny.” Apparently that crazy lady wasn’t the only sorry-excuse-for-past-human that Rapture had to offer. I find a wrench on the edge of the pool of light one dim bulb allows. It feels right in my palm, the way my fingers curl around the contour, the weight of it. 

The rubble in the doorway gives easily under the solid force of the wrench and my unexpected but entirely known upper body strength. The door drops shut before opening up with the audible sound of damaged gears turning. A stairway awaits me, with a burning couch perched at the top. Now I’m not claiming to be a genius, but I’m pretty sure couches don’t spontaneously combust, and especially not in underwater cities. I dodge just before it tumbles down the stairs and then rush the man behind it. Beating his crowbar with my wrench is easy, especially because this ‘splicer’ is a little too on the crazy side to do more than swing wildly and hope he hits. He doesn’t. I crack his skull like an egg, loot his corpse for anything useful, and proceed to inspect the room. It feels so natural, like sutures or slings.

There’s the glass walls and ceiling that seem to be the style of Rapture (and why not show off the underwater aspect of your underwater city at any chance you get? It’s certainly pretty), and a metal door on one wall. Through the glass I can see a wholly-glass hallway beyond the door, but the sensor panel isn’t working, so no option there. Instead I turn to see a staircase in the crumbling room and follow that. An advertisement blares through the speakers of a pink vending machine, it speaks in the voice of the two girls statued on either side.

“ _My daddy's SMARTER than Einstein, STRONGER than Hercules and lights a fire with a SNAP of his fingers. Are you as good as my daddy, Mister? Not if you don't visit the Gatherer's Garden, you aren't! Smart daddies get spliced, at th_ e Gardens!”

There is a syringe there, waiting for me in the open slot of the ‘Gatherer’s Garden.’ All better judgement tells me that this is a bad idea for multiple reasons. That someone was going to yell at me for this. That I know better.

Who knows who used this syringe before me?

Should I really be _‘splicing’_ when the crazed denizens of this watery dystopia are called _‘splicers’_?

Nevermind, it doesn’t look like there’s much option anyway. I stick the needle into my arm and wince when the whole limb goes tingly. Then I feel something like pins and needles, and I groan just a little. My radio buzzes to life as the pain ramps up to struck-by-lightning, and I can see my veins being electrocuted through the skin and I _scream_. 

“Just keep steady!” Mariko-san calls desperately from the speaker in my belt loop. “Your genetic code is being rewritten– just hold on and everything will be fine!” And for the sake of not vomiting I grab at the railing of the staircase with white knuckles, but I’m shaking so even when I try to slide to a sit I fall over the edge and land unconscious on the floor below.

My consciousness flickers like the lights.

On.

“This little fish looks like she just got her cherry popped!” A sick, slimy voice. I would move away if I could. I try and then--

Off.

On.

A roar of thunder, or the groan of something massive and metal. 

“Hear that?” A smaller voice, sounds like a centipede with less legs. “Let’s bug.”

The slimy one screams after the receding figure, “WEAK! You’re a _weak_ chopper!”

Footsteps stop in justification. “This little fish ain’t worth toeing it with no Big Daddy,” the centipede mutters.

The slimy one taps his pipe on the ground. “Yellow. Always have been,” he grumbles. “You’re no better off with the metal daddy, little fish. See you floating on the briney…” 

Both sets of feet leave me and the way they ran scared makes me want to get up and leave too, but trying to raise my head again is just–

Off.

On.

The footsteps are huge this time. I open my eyes now. Something giant and metal and mostly anthropomorphic looms. One hand is a drill and it’s face looks like a diver merged with the front of a submarine. I would be scared if I had the energy to be, but all I can think is ‘ _Please Gods, let me live’_ and then– 

Off.

On. 

“Look Mister Bubbles, an angel! I can see light coming from her belly…” The voice sounds like the ghost of a little girl, joyful and hollowed out. The echo across a canyon of drug-induced fervor. I crack my eyes and see a ghastly little girl, skin all grey and eyes glowing yellow. She wears a tattered little excuse for a dress and no shoes, her hair is done up in a ratty ponytail but so much of the hair is falling out that the styling has ceased any function it could have possessed. She is smiling at me. “Wait a minute, she’s still breathing.” She takes a few steps back, her smile falters before returning. “It’s alright, I know she’ll be an angel soon.” Both monsters leave in the same direction of the splicers from a minute ago.

I somehow find myself able to be glad to still be alive. 

Off. 

On.

Now I can rise, slowly albeit, without blacking out. My radio buzzes in and Mariko-san’s soft voice sounds like a smirk. “Are you alright? I know the first time is painful, but… there’s nothing quite like a fistful of lightning, is there?” I finally make my way to a stand and flex the hand that offended me with such pain. In my palm, lightning crackles.

This gives me cause for a grin, because there really isn’t anything like a fistful of lightning. 

Is there?

Why does this remind me of a pair of electric eyes?

Nevermind, the door is more important. The door with the broken sensor panel is the only viable option of exit I’ve seen and after trying to electrocute the door a few times, I finally get it right and strike the fritzing panel on the side. The door snaps open and I waste no time debating the options before I follow the glassy tunnel beyond.

This is a mistake, but I only realize it when the tail end of a plane crashes through the glass walls and the hallway begins to flood. Knowing the way back holds no alternative routes, I wade through the torrents of water and dodge the streams beginning to spit through cracks in the glass and barely notice other hallways being decimated by similar debris outside before I make it to a working doorway (for once) and instantly put it between me and the water behind. 

The room I find myself in now is worse lit than where I came from, with tiled floors and solid walls, as well as rooms branching on either side holding the usual windows. There’s another door in front of me too, but it says ‘Airlock Active’ and won’t open when I approach. Debris and water cover the floor thickly; in the room on the right the ocean slowly leaks into a shallow pool, where a corpse looks on idly; in the room on the left there’s a glowing green chamber and a folded-over mattress and another splicer. 

I sigh. 

The splicer notices me, drags his claw-hands across the ground, throwing up sparks. I zap him with my lightning hand and club him with my wrench hand. He has a first aid kit and a blue bottle labeled ‘Eve Hypo’ that I take from his corpse. He won’t be using them anyway. 

Only now does the door open– to reveal another splicer no less. He has a crowbar and screams “I didn’t mean to hurt anyone!” as he attempts to maul me to death. The crowbar strikes my arm, but I still bludgeon his head before he can do anything further.

Behind him is stairs, which I ascend to a room with another golden, chiseled man hanging in a corner behind an abandoned desk. The ground rumbles beneath me as several pieces of something are dislodged from the ceiling and fall before me. One of which is a man, who is on fire and trying to attack me. I shock him to death in moments. He drops another ‘Eve Hypo’, and I take it before exploring the volatile room. There are overgrown planters of ferns that give everything a jungled look and a few fenced-off areas with displays lined up like a souvenir shop. One of the rooms I can enter holds elevators and– without any real objective except ‘move’ I step inside one that is suspiciously lit up. 

Why am I suspicious of this?

Why don’t I care about where I’m going?

Nevermind, the headache is more important. I see just a few brief flashes: breakfast, a chair in a dark room, a picture frame. Then it’s all gone as soon as it came and I’m back in the elevator feeling more than a little confused.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey y'all I'll be posting chapters of this fic every other Wednesday!! Stay tuned for my bullshit and scream at me in the comments! Nothing brings me more joy!
> 
> (On the Wednesdays where I'm not posting this fic, I'll be posting another fic "The Hobbit, but the universe does the macarena" which is another multiverse fic. That one should be funny. Now you've got my shameless self-promo. But Sherlock (BBC show) will be in there, so I figured y'all might be interested)


	3. Don't Think Too Hard

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All her paths are very well-laid for her, and she just has to follow them. She may not have a singular fucking clue who she is, what's going on, or why her thoughts are copy/pastes from other places, but she is very good at following orders.

My radio buzzes fitfully to life. Maiko-san’s soft voice chimes through, the timbre of emotion making it smaller than before. “You know–” she whispers, “I have a family.” Her voice breaks with helplessness I can hear even through the static. “I need to get them out of here, but the Splicers have cut me off from them. If you can reach them in Neptune's Bounty, then maybe, just maybe…” she gives me a weak, mirthless laugh. “I know you must feel like the unluckiest person in the world right now, but you're the only hope I'll ever see my daughter and husband again.” A deep sigh, “Please,” and then a more firm “ would you kindly go to Neptune's Bounty– find my family…” And just when I think this stranger has shown me the true depths of her emotion, she repeats “Please,” just under a whisper and I feel my heart leave me and go to her for comfort. I know now that I have to save this woman, save her family, and get them to safety.

So. Next stop: Neptune’s Bounty. 

It’s just through the Medical Pavilion, isn’t it?

Why do I know where that is?

No. No. No more questions, they’re distracting and right now I’m a soldier on a mission to save civilians from a warzone. 

Actually I’m not a soldier, I’m… Someone. Certainly, I’m someone. I wish I knew who. Maybe I was a soldier before, maybe that’s why all this comes so naturally. The excitement of the danger, just me and myself in the face of unlikely odds.

I step out of the elevator to find a still very-well-outlined trail for me to follow, and of course, there is a splicer waiting just around the corner.

I raise the wrench to dash in with no holds barred, but her shadow, her echo, catches my attention. She sings a low, dissonant tune and I can tell by the silhouette she’s bending over a stroller, singing to it.

“When you’re daddy’s in the ground, momma’s gonna sell you by the pound. When your mommy’s up and gone, you’re gonna be the lonely one. When you are the lonely one, no one will be there to sing this song.” Her shredded vocal cords make the morbid song even stranger and I can’t help but feel someone erratic enough to sing that to a child shouldn’t have charge of one in the first place. The song has stopped, but the echo continues as the shadow begins to twitch. “Hush now,” it soothes hoarsely, “Mommy’s gone… and daddy too…” whatever child this woman has custody of doesn’t need soothing, it hasn’t whined even a little, and if it did that is not the way to do it. But hey, what do I know? It’s not like I’ve ever had kids, probably. “Wait,” the mommy-splicer interrupts herself, “this is happening before and not… why aren’t you here? Why is it today and not when you were warm and sweet?” Now I am concerned, genuinely, because it is beginning to dawn on me that this woman is not talking to a baby. “Why can’t mommy just hold you and– I’m bleeding. Mommy’s bleeding!” Now the shushing mother’s tone grows high-pitched and catatonic. “ _Where am I!? This is all wrong!”_ And she comes barreling around the corner, nose streaming blood and face all distorted by tumors and growths. All it takes to kill her is a single wrench-blow to the eye socket before I can relieve her of some cash and a pep bar. Going to the stroller the woman had been standing at– because I feel an intrinsic need to ensure that she was not actually talking to some poor child– I find it empty of anything living. Its occupant is a revolver. I shove the weapon into the waistband of my pants before continuing morosely through the corridor.

As if sensing my unease, Mariko-san comes back in through the radio, voice more composed than before. “Plasmids changed everything,” she explains solemnly. “They destroyed our bodies, our minds. We couldn’t handle it. Best friends killing one another, babies smothered in cribs.” I wince inwardly at that, because I know somewhere up behind my eyes that is what happened to mommy-splicer. “The whole city went to hell.” Static punctuates her withdrawal back to her hidey-hole just outside of Neptune’s Bounty. 

I walk in silence through the doorway just ahead. Beyond is what once was a hub of socialites but is now a disorienting mess of debris and bloodshed. The New Year’s poster marked for 1959 shows a man wearing a mask with chilling relation to those worn by my spliced up companions of the deep– I feel this was one party I’d have missed. The neon reading out with the same congratulatory message hangs awkward and lopsided and several meters lower than intended, probably used at one point or another as a climbing foothold for anyone leaping from the demolished balcony edge to the still-spinning Rapturian globe intimidating the dance floor below. The set of stairs that one is supposed to use for things like going downstairs has been left helplessly disused and thus in fairly good condition, if you’re okay with some wet feet. All the decor was once subtle and warm, but when setting up party decorations it’s rare to have them be so permanent, so the colors have turned to drab and dull, some damp and dust settled in at the corners. 

Voices grind below, maybe they were high-pitched once, or maybe people going through constant drug overdoses are liable to have strained vocal cords. I don’t know, and how should I know? I’m no doctor. Probably.

I’ve probably never been to war either, but I sure can move like a soldier. I am silent down the stairs and I club the male splicer outside the door, just as he’s bitching about whoever is inside the locked door owing him ADAM. He falls like a downed glass of alcohol, which the female inside the door hears and uses as an excuse to emerge worriedly from her vaguely-safe-house. 

“Koichi!” She squeals. This is the one with the streaky voice and I make no mistake in her quick dispatch. 

Next up: exploring the vaguely-safe-house. It’s the carcass of a kitchen, and the only real materials found, other than the EVE hypo from the lady’s corpse, is five dollars and a first aid kit. Basically a waste of time, although God knows the only things that don’t feel like a waste of somehow-precious time right now is finding Neptune’s Bounty and reuniting Mariko-san with her family.

Back on the dancefloor, the flooded indent holding the globe now also holds two splicers, drunkenly stumbling. 

“If you catch a splicer in the water, hit them with your electro-bolt,” Mariko-san nearly sighs into the radio. She sounds so… helpless. All she can do for now is help me get to her and wait like a damsel in distress. I know I’d hate that bit.

The anthropomorphic monsters in the knee-deep puddle fry to death. Very easy. I make a note to use that more often.   
Unfortunately, I’m not in Rapture for dancing, and there’s nowhere to go from downstairs. I head back up the stairs and head for the bathrooms instead. Some conditioned principle of modesty forces me into the room labeled “Ladies” and away from the one labeled “Gents”. 

The inside is exactly as well-kept as one would expect in a drug-addicted hell-hole. Half the sinks and two toilets are entirely gone. Mirrors smashed. The handicapped stall has been entirely demolished in the hopes of making a convenient spot to enter the next room. Maybe not convenient for one trying to run a successful dance floor and restaurant, but very convenient for one trying to leave said dance floor and restaurant. 

My luck turns up when there is only one set path ahead of me, but flips when Mariko-san’s voice comes in with new, fear-filled intensity through the speaker of my radio. “Would you kindly lower that weapon?” she requests politely.

And I think: Oh, of course, what was I doing, waving it around like that, in the first place? The thought feels foreign in my head, like a copy/paste from another dialogue into my own, but I still think it.

I creep onto the catwalk, a theater stage below me, and see a little girl, a child, kneeling next to a corpse. I can’t tell whether it’s scarier that there is a child among the monsters here or that the tiny thing is sticking a bloated, dead body with a syringe. 

“That’s not a child below you,” Mariko-san cuts in abruptly, she sounds horrified in a soft, sympathetic way. “Don’t be fooled; she’s a Little Sister now.” Her voice fills with righteous anger, it might not be aimed at the girl– the thing– below me, now drinking from the graduated end of the syringe through a special bottle-top.

Mariko-san’s tone goes south, into bitter sadness. “Somebody,” and I guessed that she meant a very particular somebody, “went and turned a sweet baby girl into a monster. Whatever you thought about right and wrong on the surface doesn’t count for much here in Rapture.” A pause, then she went to a more didactic tone, and I had to shake my head to clear the protest from it. “Those Little Sisters, they carry ADAM, that’s the genetic material that keeps the wheels of Rapture turning. Everybody wants it. Everybody _needs_ it.” I feel the dilapidated carpet of Rapture’s theme under my feet again and hurry down the stairs that are immediately before me.

There’s a window at the bottom of the landing, likely where one would watch the play’s taking place on the stage from, and I can see a man enter through the curtains. I feel my stomach drop– exactly like it would if this was a play and not some demented man coming to kill some demented child. It’s only when I get close enough to try and warn the kid when I see what she looks like: grey skin, glowing yellow eyes, a frankly disgustingly blood-and-grit-covered frock, and a ponytail more in shambles than my apparent logical reasoning capabilities. She looks familiar, but there is no real way for that to be possible.

I want to scream for this girl, but she spots the assailant and beats me to the punch. Almost immediately, a big pile of mildewy metal with a porthole barrels out from behind the curtain and the man is down before he can raise his gun. I’d sigh in relief if it was any relief to have one threat replaced by another.

Except the Little Sister takes his hand in hers (which is a hyperbole, really, her whole hand can barely wrap around his finger) and skips away with a smile. Unperturbed.

“That’s the Big Daddy,” Mariko-san chimes in, still with a somberly informative tone. “She gathers ADAM, he keeps her safe.” 

Well, at least one of us is safe.

I break the lock on a gate to my left, and follow some of Rapture’s more direct and window-laden paths, through a ragtag gathering of splicers and one unfortunate Big Daddy corpse, to a sign reading Neptune’s Bounty– $48 and two pep bars richer. A chain-linked gate shuts in my face and I barely dodge a flamethrower to the solar plexus. And, of course, a dozen splicers suddenly want to be my suicide buddy and they all come flying down a set of stairs waving guns and crowbars. 

The soothing voice of Mariko-san comes to me, filled with static and calm and background information I wish I’d known earlier while I fight off the straggling splicers.

“It seems Futaba Kento has discovered your location. Don’t worry, I will keep you safe– we’ll take the alternate route through the Medical Pavillion. Head that way, if you would kindly.”

I follow instructions, because for any fighting prowess I do or do not possess I am hopelessly outmatched.

I catch a break in the access to the Medical Pavilion being open and across the hall. But who cares for anything being easy? The bulkhead door shuts before my very eyes and, while Mariko-san promises to try and override it from her position, the screen in the corner fuzzes from black to a black-and-white of one Futaba Kento, with hands still untouched by more than a bureaucratic papercut and suit still pressed. The picture was, of course, taken before whatever bedlam sent Rapture through the wringer.

“So tell me, friend, which one of those _mongrels_ sent you?” He spits through the loudspeaker. “The KGB wolf? The CIA jackal? Hm? Well, let me clear the waters: Rapture isn’t some sunken ship for you to plunder. And Futaba Kento is no giddy socialite. I won’t be slapped around by government muscle. And with that: farewell, or dasvidaniya. Whichever you prefer.” His screen snaps out of existence and the white noise now consists of the spliced-up screams of maniacs attacking the separating glass between me and them. Oh, and Mariko-san telling me “I got it! Get out of there!” and when the glass cracks and I rush towards the bulkhead she nearly screams “Get out now!” 

I open the bulkhead post-haste, without a splicer able to make it with me, thankfully.

When the bulkhead opens to the Medical Pavilion without a flood warning, Mariko-san comes back in, tiredly, on my radio. “Now you’ve met Futaba Kento, the bloody king of Rapture,” she scoffs, before telling me “Get to Emergency Access.”

So I do, following the angular halls of Rapture and attempting to ignore the patronizing advertisements telling me of Dr. Mizuno Akiko’s spectacular medical prowess, and insisting that splicer issues are under control. 

All of it, so backwards. 

It takes a long while– who knows how long days really are?– and six splicers before I reach Medical Access.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey there! Sorry I missed last week's update, I went out of town! Scream at me in the comments, nothing brings me more joy!


	4. Why You're Here

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She isn't sure what she is, but she is sure of what she's not: a telephone. Nothing can stop her and nothing will, aside from the progression of the plot in manipulated directions.

At Medical Access I’m supposed to find a way into Neptune’s Bounty, Mariko-san tells me, but she conveniently forgets exact instructions, so I flounder a bit longer. This is all feeling very repetitive and honestly I don’t want to keep going, but she just says “would you kindly?” with such a gentle voice and I melt, I can’t stop myself from helping her. 

As I wander through one of the glass tunnels interconnected between virtually every building in this sunken city, I walk a little slower, ignoring the smell of rust and mildew and death, to appreciate the scenery. A school of fluorescent red fish lazily amble by above me. Starfish cling to the tunnel walls. I can see a gorgeous panorama of this chunk of Rapture, with Plasmid advertisements and Surgery propaganda. In the tunnel several yards away, running adjacent to mine, I see _them_. Him: a giant metal man with a drill for a hand. Her: a tiny grey girl cradling a needle. The same pair I saw earlier, but different. This Sister’s dress is green, her hair rust-colored, and the Daddy’s suit is more bullet-riddled and blade-flayed.

I keep watching and walking. They are skipping, oblivious– or she is, while he walks at a snail’s pace to compensate for her tiny legs. 

I don’t want to encounter them if I don’t have to.

I don’t want to kill them.

Outside of what looks to be an emergency room, I finish off two splicers with a shock of electricity to the water they’re in and head back out to another one of the glass hallways that aren’t growing any less glamorous despite the frequency. It gets a little less glamorous when the tunnel ruptures at the end, though. 

“Sounds like another tunnel collapse,” Mariko-san murmurs sympathetically into the radio, then, louder, she laughs. “Welcome to Rapture, it’s the world’s fastest growing pile of trash.” I chuckle too, even though she can’t hear me. It seems polite.

Flashes of sepia-toned somethings. Food-stealing. Inappropriate jokes. Barely-wrong answers to problems with sideways solutions.

Staggering slightly, and trying desperately to shake off the question of who the implied ‘we’ is, I take a detour through a door on my left. Inside is a room with black-and-white tiled floors and a more extensive collapse on the other side of the room, as well as an archway branching to a larger, less collapsed room. Screams of a child are coming from there. I raise my wrench and approach cautiously.

The Big Daddy comes flying through the archway and lands, dead, barely three feet in front of me. He’s on fire and leaking blood and it occurs to me that machines don’t bleed. It also occurs to me that there is some joke there that I’m just missing, but that’s hardly important now.

I peek through the offending archway to see the green-dressed Little Sister from earlier. Mariko-san calls through my radio with a voice like she’s salivating. “It’s a little one!” she cooes, “Now’s your chance to get some ADAM.”

I step into the room. A splicer looms over the child on what looks like a dancefloor. He gets shot in the head, but shockingly not by me. My head snaps to the source of the gunshot.

In one of three balconies nearly fifteen feet above the floor, a woman holds a gun towards my head. Her frame is tall, but thinner than a needle, she might weigh a hundred pounds, and she’s wrapped in long, tan coat that I’m not sure is warm enough. Eyes are on fire with something unplaceable but as dark as the bottom of any ocean trench. Hair settles in wisps around her ears. Lips are thin, and drawn thinner in concentration as she says “Stay away from her or it’s you who’ll be shot next.” She looks familiar. I’ve seen her before, I think.

I don’t have time to speak before Mariko-san talks through my radio. “Easy now, Sherlock, she’s just looking for a little bit of ADAM. Just enough to get by.” I’m not a telephone. I’m not a telephone. I’m not a telephone.

“I’ll not have her hurt the little ones,” the woman, apparently ‘Sherlock,’ says flatly. I start to wonder what, exactly, I would have to do to get ADAM from this girl. Because it’s sounding a lot like I’d have to kill her, and that is not what I’m here for. Nevermind the fact that I don’t know what I _am_ here for.

“It’s alright,” Mariko-san soothes me, as if she read my thoughts. “That’s not a child, not anymore. Miss Sherlock saw to that!” Slowly, dubiously, basically unwillingly, I take a few steps towards the child, who begins to scamper away on hands and knees because she’s so scared she can’t stand.

Sherlock exclaims “Don’t hurt her.” I slow down even further. “ _Please_.” I stop. 

A scoff comes from my hip-height radio. “Oh, that is a pretty sermon coming from the psychopath who created these creatures in the first place.” 

By what seems a force of habit, Sherlock corrects Mariko-san: “And what does that make _you_ , Moriwaki Akira?” Who?? Who the fuck??? I’m not a telephone, and if I was, I would like _very much_ to know who was on each end.

The amendment goes unnoticed by the irate woman on the short-wave. “You took fine little girls and turned them into _that_ , didn’t you? Listen,” and now Mariko-san addresses me, “you won’t survive without the ADAM those… things… are carrying. Are you prepared to trade your life– and the lives of my daughter, my husband, for Sherlock’s little Frankensteins?”

Just as I’m thinking that the guilt will live with me forever, and I’ll try to make it quick, the woman behind me gets my attention once more. “Here! There is another way. Use this,” she passes me a bottle, and looks pleased when I catch it, “free them from what I’ve done. I’ll make it worth your while.” The bottle has an ominous red glow, but what doesn’t when you’re at the bottom of the ocean? I drink it quickly and feel the tingle of a plasmid enter my bloodstream. 

The Little Sister has pressed herself, shaking, to a luggage box and I reach out one hand gingerly. She protests but I manage to put my palm to her forehead and she collapses under a harsh glow of light. Just as I’m wondering if I did it wrong and have accidentally killed a small child, the light leaves with a flash and before me sits a perfectly healthy, if somewhat pale and emaciated, young girl of maybe seven or eight. 

She looks at her hands before grinning wildly, her eyes a match to the green on her dress and now glowing with joy instead of drugs. “Thank you, miss!” she exclaims before sprinting across the room and wiggling into a golden hole in the wall.

The woman on the balcony sighs with relief, Mariko-san scoffs into the radio.

“I’ll start by telling you that person is a fraud,” Sherlock says without emotion. “She’s manipulating you so she can ultimately take over this godforsaken dump and then throw you to the sharks. Her real name is Moriwaki Akira.” 

I scoff, almost in unison with my radio. “Really, Sherlock?” Mariko-san jeers, “You couldn’t prove that, even if it was true.” Sherlock looks like Futaba Kento. That’s why she looks familiar! The only plausible explanation– after all, when you’ve ruled out the impossible, all that’s left is– is what, again?

Now a smirk comes to the one on the balcony, Sherlock’s lowered her gun. “Yes I could, or in this case: can. Now would you like to admit it yourself or should I just start talking?” There is no doubt, no emotion, nothing but calculation in her sing-song voice. It’s miles from what I’m certain I heard when she’d pleaded for the life of that little girl.

A pause sits within the radio for so long I wonder if it has malfunctioned. No, though, I’m not so lucky. “Would you kindly ignore the crazy Miss Sherlock and find my family? I think we’ve wasted enough time here.” At first, I don’t want to move, but then I see: yes. We have wasted much too long here, dallying with sociopathic scientists and ghoulish girls. It’s time to continue with my mission.

A look of pity evanescently brushes over Sherlock’s face. That brings up more stings of heart-rending pictures. A gunshot on a rooftop. Falling asleep under a coat on a couch. A fire in someone’s hotel. I stumble out of the room and continue my quest towards Neptune’s Bounty.

Before I’ve gotten far, Mariko-san tells me, “If you come across another of those pink Gatherer’s Garden machines, go ahead and get yourself another plasmid. If you can afford it, of course. Saving Little Sisters doesn’t get you nearly as much ADAM, but that’s your prerogative…” she cuts out as a new sound fills my ears.

There’s a song playing, recorded voices of little girls join in fuzzily. I follow the noise to– as luck would have it– bright pink, rusting vending machine with a metallic Little Sister on either side. The options offered are almost overwhelming, but I eventually go for buying the Incinerate plasmid. It seems useful in a city of frigid water leaking from every possible seam.

This is all well and fine until I proceed to find another Big Daddy and Little Sister pairing not ten minutes later. 

There is an implicit choice here: I can ignore this, leave things as they are, and pretend I never saw anything, I could kill the both of them like the animals they are probably meant to be treated as, or I could save the Little Sister the way I’d done before. This would have been an easy choice except for the part where getting to _her_ meant most probably killing _him_. Which frankly sounded like a pain in the ass.

But I’d like to think I’m a good person, so here goes nothing. 

I steal a shotgun from a corpse and fire all four rounds into the metal giant’s face. Now blood leaks chillingly from one small porthole and he screams in pain before running at me, drill raised. Just before impact, I glide to the left and try out my new Incinerate plasmid on him. The fabric on his body lights up and some of the metal warps under the heat. He swings wildly at me, blinded by pain and rage. The Little Sister screeches behind him, and sobs. 

I try not to feel guilt.

That bit gets easier when the Big Daddy whips out a machine gun and fires away, leaving me with milliseconds to dive behind a counter and wait until he has to reload. Then I realize my opportunity, peek up above the countertop, shoot him with a bolt of electricity, and unload a whole clip from my pistol into a soft spot in his armor. More blood falls out, but finally he groans pitifully and falls to the ground.

The Little Sister sprints to his side, seemingly not caring about my personage or cavalry, and clings to him as her crying wracks her tiny frame. “Mr. Bubbles, please wake up…” she pleads. 

The guilt is back. In order to try and fulfill some sort of karma, I approach her carefully. She tries to kick at me, bite, scratch, but I’m honestly about three times her size, even as short as I am, so she isn’t hard to lift and I press my palm almost desperately to her forehead. A flash of hot white light and I set her down quickly. 

Dress: still a dusty purple and covered in blood and grime. Hair: still ratty and barely contained by a white scrunchy. Body: still thin as a rail and dirty to discoloration, but not grey anymore. Eyes: bright without an ominous glow as she looks all around her in bewilderment. Voice: shy when she thanks me and scampers away on bare feet. 

I feel a little better about killing the Big Daddy now, despite the mournful look the ex-Little Sister casts him as she disappears into a hidey-hole in the wall. The second is short though, then I feel a sharp pain in my neck and the world goes black.

“Wake up, would you kindly?” I snap my eyes open. 

“Sit, would you kindly?” I raise myself to sit up, opening my eyes to observe the world around me. 

“Stand, would you kindly?” I am suddenly on my feet. I look around to see I’m in a clean, if anything overly-posh, office. I had been sleeping on the couch.

Resting coolly in the chair across from me is a dark figure reading a yellowed newspaper. “At ease.” I let out the breath I was not choosing to hold. Relaxing back into the couch, I recognize the man across from me as one Futaba Kento. Rapture’s seemingly totalitarian, aristocratic pioneer-leader. He pours me tea, of all the things he could do. “‘Would you kindly’… hmph,” he spits in a measuredly contemptuous tone. “Tell me, what separates a human from a slave, hm?” he requests politely, patronizingly. “Money? Power? No.” Without any amount of extra force, Mr. Futaba sets the teapot back down, but it seems to shake the table. “A human _chooses_. A slave _obeys_.” 

Dubiously, I take the tea offered to me. “You have no memories, do you? Nothing of, say, a plane crash?” Narrowing my eyes, and really wishing the bastard would get to the point, I shake my head. “Let me be clear,” Mr. Futaba hisses, menace slicing through his voice, “I want to know why you think you’re here.” 

“I’m not sure I understand,” I reply, unintimidated.

A condescending smirk, “Of course you don’t. You weren’t made to understand, just to do.” I’m getting very close to throttling this son of a bitch, but he finally puts down his own tea. “‘Would you kindly…’ Powerful phrase, isn’t it? Familiar phrase, perhaps?” 

Is it? It is. Where have I heard that? 

Oh. 

_Oh._

Irikawa Mariko-san. As in Irikawa “Would you kindly pick up a radio _/_ find a crowbar _/_ lower your weapon _/_ ignore Sherlock _/_ etc.?” Mariko-san. Things are starting to feel sideways. 

“Stand, would you kindly?” I stand up. “Run, would you kindly?” I run, and I feel sick for it because this is certainly not what I want to be doing right now. “Stop.” I stop. Turning away from me, Mr. Futaba calls “Reiko-san, your assistance is requested.” A pretty woman enters, clipboard in hand. Back to holding my attention, Mr. Futaba hands me my wrench, looking disgusted at the feel of it between his fingers. “Would you kindly kill Reiko-san, here?” he requests flatly.

My mind screams in protest, but my hand grabs the wrench. Reiko-san only looks slightly displeased with this, casting an annoyed glance to Mr. Futaba. 

When I begin to step towards her, I begin to cry, to scream. “Stop, please, _please_! Don’t make me kill her!” But I raise the wrench above my head and slam it downwards without the ability to give her mercy.

“Stop!” Futaba Kento finally releases me. The wrench is only six inches from Reiko-san’s hair, she has cowed slightly but rights herself when I drop my arm and the wrench to my side. I take a shaking breath.

Waving Reiko-san away with a flick of the wrist, Mr. Futaba smiles, slimily. “Consider this before continuing any work with Irikawa Mariko. My sister was right about her: she is Moriwaki Akira.”

Before I can protest, a gag is brought around my mouth and a bag is brought over my head. I’m pulled from the room, with the final words I hear being “No one knows of this conversation, yet. Use that wisely.”


	5. The Other Side of the Vents

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She knows what she's gotta do now. She still doesn't have her memories, but she's got a name and a place to go. She's not sure if either are hers, but she likes them.

When the footsteps retreat and I take the bag and gag off, I am exactly two steps from where I was before I was abducted, I have also had a little while to develop a plan. It requires a Little Sister. From what I’ve seen though, there aren’t a lot of them in the Medical Pavilion, so I head back to Emergency Access and, with a stroke of luck that takes several tries to obtain, hack open a bathysphere to Neptune’s Bounty. 

“You made it!” Mariko-san exclaims, with hope shining so close to real in her voice. “My family is in a submarine in the foundation of Fontaine Fisheries, head to the control deck first so you can unlock this awful cage and let me to them.” The fact that I plan to do none of that makes it a little hard to hear her say “Thank you. Thank you so much,” but the fact that she has been controlling my mind for some time now pushes me right past that.

In front of me a corpse is strung to a pillar, totally bloodied, with a gruesome message reading ‘smuggler’ scrawled below. Past him is a series of vending machines, a Big Daddy corpse slumped to the ground, blood long washed away by the water leaking a steady stream from the ceiling. He has a bazooka, which I take. Seems useful.

The room is halfway collapsed, I have to crawl over a fallen wall to get past it, another of Rapture’s iconic automatic sliding doors promises a glassy hallway beyond, but this particular hallway is flooded, with dense schools of fish crowding any view. An ironic, fallen sign tries to argue that things are fine– that there’s been 91 days since the last accident, and only 2 accidents last year. Based on the decor I’d say that’s not up-to-date.

Through another hallway on the other side of the room, I see, or more accurately _hear,_ exactly what I need: A Big Daddy’s thumping footsteps like a heartbeat on depressant drugs. As I approach, he doesn’t notice me, and neither does the tyke on his heels. She giggles, “I hear angels, Mr. B!” I pull out my newly acquired bazooka and load a grenade in before sneaking right up to the back of the Big Daddy. The grenade explodes right into his middle and I reload another before the lumbering giant can try and attack. He has barely lifted a rivet gun when I fire the other shot. He falls. She screams. 

As quickly as I can I put a hand to her forehead. She doesn’t fight it, just sobs pitifully. The glow flashes and I set her down, where she wipes her tears and frowns meaningfully at the corpse I created before gently whispering, “Thank you…” And she turns to skitter away.

“Wait! Please, wait!” The little girl stops. “I need your help.” Cautiously, she shuffles closer to me. Her blue eyes are suspicious, and I think that’s healthy for one in her situation, and her thin face quivers at the sight of me– and I must be a sight, I realize, covered in as much blood and dirt and gunpowder as I am. “I’m looking for a woman, Miss Sherlock.”

At this, her face lights up. “Oh! Ma! She lives at the other side of the vents. Do you know her?” All previous shyness is gone; instead, the little girl shakes her little brunette head of hair and waits for my answer. 

With some confusion as to how to explain any of my situation, I relent to just saying “Yeah, she… um, she helped me before.” 

Tiny hands clap excitedly. “Really!? I’ve never heard of Ma helping _anyone_. You must be a really good friend. Come on, she’s this way!” She accepts my help into a golden vent in the wall and waits for me to climb up after her. These things really were intended for little girls though, so I have to army crawl very uncomfortably, and much slower. My shoulder tingles with the strain.

She rambles on and on about ‘Ma’, and how she always has a sour face unless the girl or one of her sisters is very clever, but the grey ones rarely are. She tells me that the grey ones don’t come back often, and they always walk around with Mr. B. When I ask her though, she seems to have no memory of having literally just been part of that denomination. Instead, she changes the topic, saying that her sisters were going to be so happy to meet one of Ma’s friends. 

This drags on almost endlessly. My elbows ache and my shoulder screams (why does my shoulder hurt so bad?) when she finally heads toward a nearly-metaphorical light at the end of the non-metaphorical tunnel.

She slides out easily and I follow, much more clumsily, after her. 

There is no way to avoid falling practically headfirst from the vent. I hear the scrape of a chair and some childish giggles. 

Sherlock comes to stand above me. “You–… You’re the slave.” She seems genuinely surprised at this.

Rolling into a sit, I correct her. “Apparently not anymore.”

“Name?” she demands.

“Huh?”

“What. Is. Your.” She leans forward, right into my personal space, uncomfortably close. “Name,” she whispers.

“I, uh,” name. Name. Wait– what is my name? This is more than ‘pretty girl is looking at me and I forgot.’ This is full-blown ‘I literally don’t have a fucking name.’ “I… don’t have one?”

“Unacceptable,” she snaps, straightening to a stand. More giggles echo from behind her.

“It’s not like I can help it!” I finally stand up, and see the laughter emanates from a litter of about fifteen to twenty young girls.

She scoffs. “No, it’s not. But you do need a name.” She rocks on her heels– where did she get _stilettos_ that nice in this dump?– and turns an inquiring eye on the gaggle of girls and their giggles.

“Nezuko!”

“Toga!”

“Hana!”

“Wato!”

Several seconds pass. Sherlock studies the desk more pointedly than seems normal, and then she clears her head with a firm shake and a cursory glance around the room. “Right. Okay. Your name is Wato.”

And I don’t even really care, who cares what people call me. Except: “How do you know it’s my name?” I demand, hand twitching for my wrench.

Sherlock waves me off and goes to sit at a microscope. “The same way I know that Irikawa Mariko is Moriwaki Akira and the same way I know that you are under the influence of severe mental conditioning.”

There’s a lot to unpack there. “Who is Moriwaki Akira?” I start with.

Sherlock rolls her eyes. Her mouth is smiling though, and that does weird things to my insides. “She _was_ Rapture’s leading psychologist. But she ended up clawing for power, trying to usurp my _lovely_ brother, and running a few large factions of splicers through radio communications and manipulative psychology. Well, that’s the short version.”

“Wow,” I whistle. “That’s pretty impressive.”

“What?” Sherlock scoffs, kind of manically, in kind of a pretty way, “Being that power-hungry?”

“You,” I amend.

She flusters immediately, collapsing into a rolling office chair and piloting herself across the room to a desk, coat bunched around her.

I’m unsure whether I should bother pursuing her.

“Ma, is Wato your friend?” The girl who led me here asks Sherlock.

She doesn’t respond. 

“Ma.” She sings. “Mama, mama, mama, Sherlock!” Now the other ones start laughing, trying to shush themselves with hands over their mouths, but with little effect. “Mama!”

“Sherlock!” I finally cry out, because I’m starting to not be sure if she’s okay at that point and I still need to use her. 

Immediately, she looks up from her knees and I nod to the mess of giggling child at my feet. “Yes?”

“Nevermind,” the tyke hums, before skipping away to her sisters.

A long-suffering sigh, and Sherlock spins and returns to her work.

“It’s almost finished,” Sherlock mumbles. I almost miss it.

“Hm?”

“Lot 192, a replication of it. It’ll release the mental conditioning. Dr. Mizuno created it initially, the paranoid bat, in case Moriwaki ever tried to use you against her. I got one of the girls to grab me a sample and I’m reverse-engineering enough to fully undo your… condition.” She says all of this without looking up from her microscope, almost to herself. Nodding, even though she can’t see it, I wander a few feet away.

Although it’s very clear the cavernous sub-basement we’re in was never meant for anything more than storage (likely for a hospital if Sherlock’s abundance of such equipment can lead one to conclusions) there’s been visible attempts from both Sherlock and her adopted brood to make it more homey. Weathered metal bunk-beds, with paint flaking off and fading, have wisps of fraying red carpet strung up like curtains around their molding mattresses adorned with browning blankets. Toys and teddy bears and books and all sorts of miscellaneous children’s items in disrepair and decay litter the floor, and the girls are filling every spare inch with their crude chalk art. There are a few chairs pilfered from restaurants, more wheelchairs, no tables. Cans and packages of nonperishable foods lie open in various stages of consumption, and girls pick at them with their fingers for a lack of utensils. They don’t mind, of course. They don’t know better. For some of them, they’ll never know life before this room in anything but pastel grays tap-dancing in ballet slippers across the tips of their ears and noses– right there, but not quite perceived. The blessing in that is that they won’t remember their food being blood from a syringe-bottle. But this is no way for children to live either. This is no way for anyone to live. 

“You arrived earlier than expected,” Sherlock explains to the eyepiece of the microscope, “there must have been a significant loss on Nii-chan’s side.” 

Looking back to the tall woman in the office, I ask “What does that mean?”

She looks up just long enough to give me a grin that feels like a shark’s skin as it glides past in the water. I’m the guppy. “You’re here to get your head fixed,” her voice sounds like scissors cutting one continuous ribbon of paper, “but you wouldn’t have known to get your head fixed if my _lovely_ brother,” the sarcasm is heavy and more affectionate than you would have guessed their relationship to be, “hadn’t put that idea in your head. He wouldn’t have told you anything if it wasn’t going to benefit him somehow, and I’d bet money Moriwaki Akira had plans for you that wouldn’t end well for him, so he took you out of her toolbox. But he wouldn’t have even needed to do that unless there was a gap in his defenses that Moriwaki could exploit, therefore Kento must have had a significant loss to justify his leading you to me to get your head fixed.”

The way I felt for Sherlock in that one second was akin to the feeling of a fistful of lightning– _disturbing aesthetic sensibilities, smiling lips, being proved wrong and never being happier_. I can hardly remember anything before that, and I haven’t felt anything like it since, but I know there’s better words to talk about the way I felt, from the fringes of my hair to the tips of my fingers to the balls of my feet and everywhere in between– breathless, wide-eyed, and absolutely stunned. She’s beautiful in a way I can’t quantify because it’s not physical and I can’t remember the words. “Amazing.” Her eyes glance up, sharp like shattered glass bouncing off of rusted iron. “I didn’t realize Mariko-san was able to hurt someone like Futaba Kento.”

Sherlock laughs, high and mocking like Medusa’s snakes in a pantheon. “What did you think was going on? A woman with easy access to hacked turret-bots and surveillance couldn’t get through a gate so she could escape with her family in the one working submarine in all of Rapture?” Her gaze snaps back to some research papers and she throws me an offhand “Idiot,” for my own personal collection of labels. 

That hurts more than I’d like to admit. I’m not sure why it hurts, and that makes it worse, somehow. I back away from Sherlock and her experiment, then spin on my heels to feel hurt somewhere else. 

“Where are you going?” she demands, sounding just this side of plaintive and pleading and complaining, all in that one upturned syllable at the end.

“Out for a bit,” I snap in reply, and then I stalk out of the room with some shreds of dignity I didn’t realize I had enough of to care about.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> how ya feelin babieeessss?? i'm starting to run out of chapters i've already written, so we'll see how that goes. anything you wanna see more or less of in the plot?  
> Scream at me in the comments, nothing brings me more joy!


	6. Be a Telephone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She's just going out to clear her head, but it's only the second choice of action she's ever had, so forgive her if it doesn't go according to plan.

I don’t even get out of the common room that Sherlock’s office annexes before I am herded by a horde of Little Sisters into a corner.

“Did you and Mama fight?” one asks.

“Are you coming back?” another requests.

“Don’t leave!” a third pleads.

“Mama will come ‘round,” one coaxes.

“Promise!” yet a fifth cries.

“She just doesn’t have a careful mouth,” a final one explains.

My smile can’t help itself: they’re so sweet. “I’ll be back,” I reassure them, “I just need some space. I’ve got things to sort out in my head.” None of them look very reassured, but they don’t try to stop me; somber hands wave me goodbye. 

It’s… nice, that they worry– that anyone worries. It feels like an eternity since someone wanted me to come back to them. Maybe I’ve never had that. Who knows? Certainly not me.

I’ve just crossed the doorway out into some of Rapture’s choice maintenance tunnels when another swell of those rosy-hued images latch onto my mind and suck me out of the present moment: cello strings singing me to consciousness, a bridge with a bloodstained jacket and the only blood left is in my head and on my hands, butterfly kisses on my shoulders– _my shoulder_. I’m jarred angrily to reality with a memory that hits the back of my head so sharply that it leaves me staggering. 

My shoulder. It’s injured. It’s scarred. It’s ugly. 

I wipe my face and the back of my hand comes away bloody– something in me screams at that, and another part of me dulls the screams, and the rest of my thoughts, and keeps walking. 

The more I walk, the more I try to think about my shoulder, my bloody nose, the part of me that’s screaming, the more confused I get. And not “damn, that’s a tough one,” confused. More like it’s 4:56 and you’ve been drinking since midnight to try and forget what _she_ did and the walls are shivering and the floor is melting and you’re swimming through the whole thing but your eyes won’t open and you’re limbs are locking up and you’ve vomited three times in as many minutes and you haven’t had a coherent thought in all the hours except “she called me a friend.” 

Which is an awfully specific thing, but I won’t think about that either. Not until I’ve got somewhere to lie down and something to stop my nose bleeding so much. 

I’m tired now. I’ve wandered pretty far. I think I should head back.

“So you’ve found your way to _Sherlock,_ ” the radio crackles. The voice is distinctly Moriwaki Akira, meaning it is distinctly _not_ Mariko-san. She sighs in a soft, disappointed way. “I should have known she’d get her claws in you sooner or later– her older brother has _such_ a way,” she spits the word uncharacteristically, “with people.” Her pleasant demeanor doesn’t shift, even as her intentions do, and that’s terrifying. “Well, I suppose I should thank you, in any case, for showing me to her safe house.” She’s been tracking me. I led her straight to them. I have no idea who to trust. I should be thinking of a plan, but all that comes to mind is _what have I done_. There is one certainty that I have: I can’t let her have those children. But it’s naive of me to think I have a choice in this. “I do have just one more thing you can do for me,” her voice stings in my veins, but I can’t move my tongue to speak or my feet to move or my hands to smash the goddamned radio. 

Moriwaki Akira sings, “Would~ You~ Ki~ndly~?” the static accompanies her as she adds “Would you kindly put on the vest my friend is dropping off for you?” The tell-tale _sksh-sksh-skritch_ of splicer claws against concrete echo in the maintenance tunnel as the splicer approaches and then drops a heavy vest in front of me before skittering off. When I pick it up, I can see the vest is strapped at every seam with explosives. 

No matter how much I struggle, I have to put on the vest. My head aches with echoes of echoes of memories like ripples of water in a pool during an earthquake. 

“Now, see that control box on the wall? Would you kindly open the panel and shoot the wiring?” 

I try dropping my gun, but my hands pick it up. I try shooting the ceiling, but Moriwaki Akira waits patiently and I am forced to eventually shoot the inside wiring that I know must be what keeps Sherlock’s safehouse hidden from Moriwaki’s technology. 

I’m sobbing, screaming apologies, but nobody can hear me. I’m helpless. I’m alone.

A quiet, pleased noise breaks the static white noise of the radio, and Moriwaki hums “Now, go back to the safehouse.”

My feet stay rooted to the spot. I won’t do it. I’ll blow myself up if I have to. But I am not going to walk in there and kill a room full of children. I can’t.

Or, apparently, I can, because Moriwaki clicks her tongue in understanding and impatience and rephrases: “Would you kindly go back to the safehouse?” My feet are all too eager to do as they are told. 

When I enter the safehouse, the girls are all settled down, one of the oldest is reading a book to the others. Sherlock is still curled into a chair in her office, watching a petri dish through a microscope with fixed ignorance. 

“Go into her office,” Moriwaki commands, “I’d like to speak with her before all of this is over.”

Swallowing bile, I do as I’m told. I can’t help it. My body follows the direction of a different brain now. 

I shut the door behind me, exercising what little free will I can within the confines of my orders, and Sherlock turns to face me. Her eyes say she’s sorry for a split second before she takes me in– and what a fucking sight I must be: eyes red and leaking saltwater, face smeared with blood where my nose bled earlier, wearing a vest decked out with explosives, and shaking like a leaf. Sherlock has about two seconds in which to look more vulnerable than I’ve ever seen anyone (though, my memory extends no further than the dark hallways of Rapture, and there aren’t too many people with enough conscious to look vulnerable down here), then my radio lets out a fuzzy huff and Moriwaki is back with us. 

“Bet you never saw this coming,” she purrs. By the look on Sherlock’s face, no, she did not see this coming. “I’d say I hope you’re well, Miss Sherlock,” Moriwaki hums, “but beings as I’ve put a woman dressed in enough explosives to put your whole operation in the trenches, I think we’d both see through that particular formality. And, in case the situation isn’t clear: _I own it._ ” That’s not a hum, or a sing, or a whisper, that’s a growl, and Moriwaki’s tone is the only thing that intimates that “it” means me. Honestly, my nerves are already too frayed to care, it’s a small relief to be an object. I’m just a telephone, just a telephone, just a telephone. Sniffing a little disdainfully, Moriwaki returns to her soft voice and clarifies, “Technically, I still share _it_ s existence with you and Dr. Mizuno, but neither of you used _its_ activation phrase, so in the de facto sense, as your _brother_ would call this, _it_ is _mine_.” Sherlock and I share a sharp look, and I’m sure I must look panicked, but she has trained her features out of their previous vulnerability and into something more clinical. 

“That’s all semantics though, for some _thing_ that will be dead soon anyway,” Moriwaki catches up with herself, “I wanted to ask you about something more important. Sherlock, what do you know about the Silverfish Diner? Don’t say nothing; you wouldn’t just pick the basement of any old district. You’re not five minutes from the Silverfish. Tell me what you know.”

My peripheral hearing– what I can hear over the sound of blood coursing through every vein, urging me to _fight, fight, FIGHT_ – picks up the girls finishing their story outside. I want to vomit. I can’t kill them, Moriwaki can’t make me. Nobody can make me. But they might do it anyway. My knees bruise where they run into each other as I shudder. 

Moriwaki waits for a response. 

Sherlock opens her mouth and her eyes never leave mine and all she says is “Are you oka–?”

“Shut up about that _thing_!” Moriwaki barks violently, and I flinch through the radio speaker. “ _It_ is a means to an end, you knew that when you planned its creation! _It_ is just a slave, made to sleepwalk through life until we have use for _it_. When you tell me about that tear, you’ll run out of uses, and that _thing_ holding the radio will blow you all up– you, those little girls, all of you– and then _it_ will run out of uses too. _It is not a human_.” Maybe, in a different world, I’d be offended, but that would be a blessing in itself, because then I’d be somewhere else, and I would not be facing death, murder, and helplessness with no gun but my own to blame. 

Sherlock’s simple, clean, unreadable eyes blink, and she grabs blindly for something on the desk behind her. Every line in her expression burns blue-hot and resolved. Her hand finds a phial of a liquid glowing a sick shade of yellow. “I don’t know anything about a tear,” she scoffs, but she hands me the phial and makes a motion to tell me to drink it.

“Final answer?” Moriwaki sighs, resigned and soft once again.

“Final answer,” Sherlock echoes solidly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heyo y'all!! We are back in business and ya girl finally outlined everything (VERY vaguely, but we take what we can get here, I'm uploading 4 fanfics a week in addition to a full load of college classes and a part-time job) so I can stop procrastinating on writing the rest of this! For those of you here for BBC Sherlock content, do not worry! Your requests will be answered in two (2) chapters!   
> Scream at me in the comments, nothing brings me more joy!


	7. Time to Leave

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She's got a name, and it's hers, but she's also got 19 kids and no clue where she's going. She'll get through it though because there are two gods rooting for her and her girlfriend.

I drain the bottle as fast as I can. I feel viscous liquid slide down my throat at a pace that feels much too slow, but immediately my phalanges tingle and my heartbeat races even faster than before. It feels like it might burst. Cardiac distress. Side effects. 

Morikawa’s voice hums through the radio, “Would you kindly shoot the semtex vest you’re wearing?” 

The pistol trembles in my grasp, but rises with my arm, pointed at myself. I clench my eyes shut with terrified force. I don’t want to shoot, I don’t want to shoot. I want to put it down so badly, to throw the gun away, to never touch it again. And, this time, my arm obeys  _ me _ , and the gun leaves my hand, striking the floor with the noisy clatter of metal on metal when I drop it. 

Scoffing with distaste, Moriwaki sighs, “If  _ it _ won’t finish things, I’ll send someone else to do the job.” 

Radio static tapers off as the sending node ceases to output a signal, but the relieved white noise in my head is loud enough that I don’t notice the difference. I sink to the floor, shaking as the adrenaline leaves me with the grace of a freight train. 

Thank the gods, I’m left alone for an evanescent moment while Sherlock bolts from the office. From the other room, I hear “Girls, call your sisters, even the grey ones–” she doesn’t pause before changing her plan, and amends, “Actually, have the grey ones meet us at the Silverfish Diner.” She takes a heavy breath before telling them, “Stay safe, please.” That last word, that “please,” sounds so foreign on those lips. More flashes bombard my already hazy vision: tied to a chair and I can hear her voice through a cell phone speaker, an old church with warm light and cold air, a rooftop and a gunshot, both in triplicate. 

These thoughts yank me to my feet and I find Sherlock is already in front of me, eyes boring into mine like she can see something in them other than nerve endings and tissue. The expression leaves when she notices me noticing it. 

“Let’s get going,” her voice cracks a tense wall that I hadn’t felt before, “I want to get there before the girls do.” Her heels carry her out of the room with a swift step, and I stagger behind. 

A cramp grows in my leg, from somewhere, and that makes me lag behind, but she doesn’t let me get too far before she slows for a few steps to let me catch up. Her eyes narrow when she notices my limp, but it doesn’t feel like she’s criticizing me so much as observing. 

Sherlock dodges puddles and splicers with the same graceful ease. She doesn’t have any plasmids that I can see, but she uses a pistol like an extension of her arm, with or without bullets. I manage those that come up behind us with my wrench and shotgun. 

When the Silverfish Diner comes into view, it doesn’t look like a place to be fought over. Even at its prime, it was a humdrum, lower-class diner with stools lined up at a counter and a few booths overlooking pelagic views. Now, it’s decrepit, moist, leaking, and Rapture’s rubble occupies most of the spots where people might once have been. It’s kind of disgusting. I’m not sure why Sherlock would protect it, or why Moriwaki Akira continues to send splicer after splicer to their death over it. 

We stand outside and protect it as the girls float in like metal filings to a magnet, the human ones leading the gray leading the hulking, monstrous forms of the Big Daddies, who join us in the fight outside, when they realize the splicers are after their Little Sisters as much as they’re fighting for the diner. It feels a little strange to fight next to the things I’ve spent most of my remembered history avoiding, not that I remember much of my history, but I don’t think I’ll ever forget how much they bleed. Machines don’t bleed. Some of the Big Daddies fall, and some came to us already falling. The Little Sisters too drugged up to think straight have to be held back by their cured sisters for several minutes before they give up and sink to their knees in the booths of the Silverfish Diner. 

When a lucid child with curly black hair and a green dress sprints from the foot of a golden vent across the minefield of corpses and gunfire and explosive plasmids, she wastes no time in telling us she is the last of them, and Sherlock scoops her up like a cat and motions for me to follow her into the diner. I lock the door behind me and then I have to turn all of the grey ones human again. 

“Can’t you help?” I snap, a little exhausted, after the third one.

She shrugs, “If I could do this I would have done it a long time ago.” This clarifies nothing, only brings to mind more questions. But she’s giving me that look that probably means I’m being stupid about something, so I push on. More little flashes of memory seep through the cracks between flashes of healing light–

Heartbreak at a library cafe. Rolling her eyes when I’m so certain it’s the painting. Little stars in places they shouldn’t be and I’m stupid, stupid, stupid but it’s too late because she’s–

“Wato.”

That is my name. 

The realization strikes me particularly hard as I hear the name over and over in a thousand singular voices: shocked, worried, loving, bemused, proud, upset, angry– 

“Wato?”

“Hm…?” I’m sitting on the floor now, sort of sprawled, head lolling back. I might have fainted. The girls look a little concerned, in a desensitized way. Sherlock looks like she’s just discovered the most interesting abstract painting. 

“We’re going,” she tells me, and then her voice softens with just a tinge of uncertainty as she asks “Are you alright to–… function?”

I want to grab her hand. The right one sitting unused at her side. I really want to just hold it in mine and see if our fingers fill the spaces around each other’s palms as perfectly as I think they might. But there’s no reason to do that, and I don’t want her to think I’m dumb again. I don’t end up doing it, but the urge exists. 

“We should tell them,” a new, sweet voice coos from somewhere behind the door leading to the diner’s kitchen. Immediately, I am on my feet to see who this is, even if I’m swaying a little as I walk, with 170 centimeters of socially awkward science lady stepping in behind me.

“Now would be a bad time,” an equally new, equally sweet voice replies thoughtfully. But this one– she’s not speaking Japanese, why can I understand her? Why can I understand her!?

“Oh, but look at them!” the first voice presses, “They’re distraught! And poor Wato–”

“What about me?” I demand, feeling a little feverish in multiple senses of the word, but no one is there to answer me. 

There were voices. Unmistakably. Sherlock’s eyes are scanning the room looking for someone too, and I can see the rabbit hole her brain is falling into– why can I see that with the barest glance over my shoulder at a woman I met hours ago? I feel like she shouldn’t be that easy to read, but maybe I’m overthinking this. 

The more important thing is that we are probably in the midst of a mass hallucination. First we were all hearing the same voices– which  _ should _ have indicated that there was a person that those voices belonged to, but apparently not, because nobody is here– but secondly, and maybe more importantly, the spot where there might have been people before is now occupied by… something else.  _ What _ it is– colorless, wavering, and shaped a bit like torn paper, with the barest edges of sounds slipping through– doesn’t give nearly as clear a picture as what it isn’t– ours. I can just  _ feel _ in my bones that whatever is inside that ripped hole in the thin air is drastically different from where we are, even if the only thing I can  _ see _ through the shaky resolution is an empty room. 

A sharp splintering  _ kraickck _ reaches my ears from outside the kitchen: the splicers are going for the windows now, and they’re making progress. All the girls– and now that we’re trying to fit them all into a tiny diner’s kitchen, there are  _ several _ of them– cram closer to us and the wavering torn air as they try to distance themselves from the splicers outside. They’re scared, of course, but not as scared as other ten-year-old girls might be. I’m sure this isn’t the worst scenario they’ve escaped from. And they all seem to trust Sherlock.

“Sherlock.” My voice wavers a little, anxiously, but her eyes still snap to focus and her feet bring her to the edge of the tear. 

“Come on,” she tells me, “we don’t have all day.”

I hesitate. “Are you sure about this?”

“Eighty-seven percent,” she reassures me, if you can call those numbers reassuring. “If you don’t like those odds, I’m sure our friends out there would  _ love _ to keep you company.”

I sigh, because I’m not comfortable with those odds at all, but she’s right. No other choice. “Where are we going, Sherlock?”

“Not here, and that’s all that matters for the moment.”

And Sherlock steps through the portal. And, of course, I’ll follow. I push all the girls through first– 19 of them! What are we going to do with 19 little girls!?– and then swallow my uncertainty and step through the tear myself. 

Sherlock’s voice is indistinct, but clarifies as I step through, like a radio tuning to a station. “See?” her voice sounds like a smile as she takes my hands to guide me the rest of the way through, “not dead.”

And then we’re somewhere with warm, yellow-white light pouring through a window– which is to say we are definitely not in Rapture anymore. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heeeeyyyyy everybody!! i hope life is going okay!  
> So, cool(?) news: we have officially reached the end of my PreWritten Chapters(tm)-- i actually had to write the second half of this one today, so! we'll see how that goes! OuO"  
> i hope you are enjoying!! and for my bbc ppl, your time will come next chapter!! i have not yet written it and have no clue of the technicalities of the chapter, so lemme know if you got thots abt it-- especially, are yall enjoying wato's pov, or should I give bbc john a try too? idk yet, so lemme know what yall want.
> 
> Scream at me in the comments, nothing brings me more joy!
> 
> (PS: any of my lovely readers quarantined, self-quarantining, infected w COVID, or otherwise negatively impacted by this whole hullabaloo? if so, lemme know, I might do something special for those guys cause I sympathize uwu)


	8. No Sunshine When She's Gone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She's escaped and there's sunlight on her face. Now, what to do with 19 little girls and a woman she's increasingly sure that she's in love with? And who are those guys?

My eyes have to take several minutes to adjust, and when they clear I find Sherlock and the girls are having an even harder time of it. I try to maneuver the little ones back towards the more shadowed part of the room we’re in– it might be a warehouse, scattered crates and unopened boxes are settled in most of the open floor space in semi-organized stacks, making finding shade for us all a little easier. The sunlight stings a little bit. I have no idea how long any of us were in Rapture. My memory only extends as far as Moriwaki Akira filling a splicer with machine gun rounds from a little turret-drone. I have no idea when the last time I saw sunlight is, but I know it’s not comfortable, and I know the little girls’ eyes are too big and their skin is too pale for the sun not to be singeing them even just standing in it for a moment. Sherlock hasn’t even collected herself enough to make a witty comment. 

We are all fish out of water. 

It seems to clear Sherlock’s head when I use her long coat to tug her into the shadow of a box labeled “PROVISIONS.” Eventually, her eyes blink to meet mine, and there’s a fuzzy image of a long-lost emotion swimming in the black of her pupils. I can’t make it out though, and I know better than to think she’ll explain it. 

She does grab my hand and drag me with her to the doorway of the warehouse to take in our new environment. 

If the sunlight had been overwhelming, our new view is astounding: we’re in a warehouse on top of a cloud, which is connected by detachable bridges to other clouds with other buildings, and all of it so far from the ocean that you can’t even see it when you look down. Rapture is a dream, and a dead one. 

I’m considering asking what we should do now– we’re clearly not on Earth, but the sky can be just as good for setting up a life, can’t it? I mean, we all came from the ocean, so who’s to say where one can or can’t build a home?

But before I get to that, a calm voice, distinctly feminine and distinctly accented, pours out of speakers that I can’t find.

“ **_The False Shepherd is still loose in the city, and he has stolen Our Lamb. Citizens of Columbia, take up arms to defend your wives and daughters. Do not let our lamb be corrupted by the romances of another man– fight for the purity of Columbia, fight for the purity of family._ ** ”

Another voice takes over to explain that the False Shepherd is either six-foot-seven and African or a dwarf with red hair. I can’t help but laugh. Until his crimes are announced to be illegal possession of a weapon, murder in the second degree, arson, and assault– several counts of each. That’s not–… that doesn’t sound safe. We have nineteen little girls with us! We can’t be running around out there with a maniac like that tearing up the streets! 

“We need to hide the girls somewhere safe,” I tell Sherlock. 

She nods. “That house,” she points to one house out of the tens around us. I would doubt her, if I had the time to do so before she explained, “it’s vacant– there’s a visible layer of dust on the furniture and the curtains have been left open even though the bright sunlight is surely bleaching the fabric upholstery on the couches and chairs every day. That, and this district of town is hardly lively, so there won’t be anyone passing through very often.”

“How do you know it’s not a busy area?” I ask dubiously.

She scoffs, “Look, you can see the advertisements for the raffle hung up way in the distance, and fair advertisements in the sky, but there are no flyers anywhere around here, and there’s nobody walking to or from the fair despite the warnings over the speakers– probably because nobody in this neighborhood went to the fair in the first place.”

“Oh,” I mutter. Then I add, “That’s… that’s really cool. That you can tell all of that just by looking around.”

She blinks at me the same way she blinked at the sun when it was blinding her a few minutes ago. But she doesn’t spend long doing that before she tugs my hand and calls the girls to follow her. 

The house is, as predicted, vacant, and by the cobwebs in the corners (cobwebs! What weird, pretty little things! You never find those so far underwater!) it’s been so for a while. But the furniture is all there. There’s plates and cutlery on the table even though there are no accompanying dishes in the cabinets, and there are towels on display in the bathrooms without any replacements available under the sinks. Sherlock says the house was waiting for sale before likely being forgotten by a buyer-less housing market. 

“Not a whole lot of new business available in a city in the sky,” she says with a smirk, “but that suits us just fine.”

“Right,” I reply, feeling a little dumb, like the shadow behind the architectural masterpiece. I hadn’t thought about any of that.

Sherlock claps once. “Girls,” she calls, “You’re going to be staying here while Wato and I figure some things out about where we’re going to live in the future.” It shouldn’t excite me so much that I’m included in Sherlock’s plans for the future. “Circe, you’re not the oldest, but you are the smartest, so you are in charge, alright?”

Circe, a heavyset child in a pink dress, with hair braided into tight buns on either side of her head, nods seriously. “We’ll keep the windows shut, and the curtains closed, and the doors locked, and we’ll be super-duper quiet.”

Sherlock nods in reply and pats Circe’s head, “Good girls. We’ll be back.” And she turns and leaves through the front door without another word.

“Don’t worry about us, we’ll only be a little while. You girls be good and help each other out while we’re gone, alright?” I say, and I get several stiff nods, which makes me ask, “Does anyone need a hug before we go?”

Now the waterworks, and almost every girl rushes forward in teary desperation for a bit of physical attention in what, for them as for Sherlock and I, are very strange and uncertain times. Sherlock rolls her eyes, but also shifts uncomfortably on her feet like she’s feeling self-conscious. After everyone has gotten a hug, and a few have pried a hug from Sherlock’s legs (and she does pat them awkwardly on the back like she isn’t even sure how to hug), Sherlock and I finally leave. 

She won’t say anything to me, but the look in her eyes is upset and confused and a little wanting. I feel like I’ve seen it somewhere before– and then there’s a gunshot in the distance and I sink to my knees with the force of a brand new set of flashing visions– 

_ She jumped I didn’t shoot her she jumped why did she jump why didn’t I shoot the gun still has a bullet is she okay is she okay he won’t let me look he’s crying she’s dead dead dead–  _

_ The walls are suffocating me why can’t I move how much did I take this is what that bitch wanted didn’t she that’s why she gave me that prescription so easily this was always the plan kill her and then kill myself how neat and convenient for the mastermind but now I’m dying and the walls are closing in and folding on top of me and I’m dying– _

_ His stomach exploded and now I’m without anyone in the world I couldn’t save my only friend the only one who cared that I even went to volunteer my mentor my friend and now he’s dead who could do this why is she being so callous how does she know where I’m from why is she so beautiful why can’t I reach out and touch– _

“Wato!?” Sherlock screeches. She says it the same way somebody else might have said “help.” But it snaps me out of my head and I see her clutching her arm. 

_ Blood _ .

_ she’s dead dead dead–  _

There’s blood dripping from somewhere in her hairline too– when did this happen!?

_ couldn’t save my only friend– _

She looks scared, but she’s not panicking. That’s just me. I’m panicking.

_ the walls are closing in and folding on top of me–  _

Some plasmid crackles in my veins and aims itself at the police officers running at me with dirt on their uniforms from a hard day chasing dangerous people and doing their jobs, but I can hardly feel it. I just feel rage. I don’t see the blue in their uniforms, I see the red of Sherlock’s blood and it’s everywhere and I scream something inhuman and lightning fries a man and fire burns a man and ice stabs a man straight through bone and bees attack a man until his own family couldn’t identify him and it’s chaos and I can’t feel my own hands and I’m screaming because I am afraid because 

_ I’ve seen her die before and I can’t do that again _ . 

They’re all dead after a few seconds. At least twenty of them. Their guns and batons and more obscure weapons litter the ground around them, curling towards their old fathers like fawns to the corpses of their does. 

But I can’t stop myself. I’m hot with a halo of fire, my veins spark with electricity, I’m swarmed with buzzing insects that roar in my ears, ice drips from my fingers and shatters on the ground and I can’t calm down.   
“Wato?” Sherlock calls, “Wato, they’re dead.” I’ve killed people I’ve killed people I’ve killed people I’ve killed people “You can stop now.”

My eyes can’t find her through the red in my vision, but I cry out in reply anyway, “I can’t turn it off–  _ I can’t turn it off– _ ” My voice is a hoarse whisper now, no matter how loud I try to scream.

And then her arms are around me. One of them is tacky with blood that already clotted and dried into the fabric of her coat. Her hands are flat on my back and my arms are stuck to my sides and her face is pressed into my neck. I can feel her heartbeat in my chest. I can feel her breath in the hollow of my jaw. 

_ she’s not dead not dead not dead _

_ alive  _

The heat of the fire dies and the ice melts into tears. The bees buzz turns hazy and distant as they scatter into the sky and the electricity quiets to the snapshots of information that nerve endings send to my brain to tell me Sherlock is right here, alive. The red I was seeing, it turns out, is my own blood dripping from a shallow cut on my forehead. 

“Oh,” a new voice warbles, distant and hazy, “that is… convenient.”

Another voice chastises, “There are dead people, Sherlock, that’s not ‘convenient’ it’s  _ bad _ .”

Sherlock? Sherlock isn’t a man.

“Well, it’s convenient for us– unless those two women want to kill us too.”

“If you try and talk to them they might.”

“Then let’s ignore them.”

“They’re clearly injured! We can’t just ignore them!”

“What did I tell you? Doctor– even if you don’t remember it yet. That one’s a doctor too anyway, they’ll be fine.” I can’t see who this man is talking about, but it’s probably Sherlock– I don’t think I’m a doctor. 

“Oh, the one that’s practically passed out with a head wound?” Is that me? I’m a doctor? I guess it’s not like I know better. “Yeah, no, get your arse over here. If I’m a doctor, I’m helping these two.”

There’s shuffling footsteps, muffled where my head is resting on Sherlock’s shoulder, and then I feel her throat rumble like thunder and she growls, “Don’t you take one step closer or I’ll– wait.” She shifts how I’m positioned in her arms. “I know you.”

The one with the deeper voice replies, “You do?”

“We’ve met– not face-to-face, but… What’s your name?”

“Sherlock Holmes, and you are?”

“Sherlock.”

“No fucking way is there two people with your absurd name,” the other man coughs incredulously. 

“Rude,” my Sherlock snaps.

“How d’you know them?” I whisper, words slurring and cracking in my shredded trachea. 

“Shhh, don’t worry about it, Wato,” Sherlock whispers back, “just rest.”

Holmes clears his throat pointedly. The other man says, “I wouldn’t act like that so openly in the street if I were you– people aren’t… they aren’t exactly  _ friendly _ about that kind of behavior.”

Sherlock tangibly bristles.

“They tried to make me throw a baseball bat at two women trying to get married,” he explains. “That’s why I’m running from the police now.”

Sherlock relaxes marginally. “Oh.” But she doesn’t move away from me or put me down. “Where did you two come from?”

Holmes makes a noncommittal noise, and assumedly passes off the explaining to his friend, who says, “Let’s see, I was in a boat with these two old ladies, and then I went inside this lighthouse.” Why does that sound so familiar? “The lighthouse shot me up here, and those old ladies told me to find  _ him _ in that big tower– er, I guess what’s left of it now–”

“Thank you for that,” Holmes snarks.

“– but first I got roped into that raffle nonsense, and that’s about when they, uh, tried to make me throw a baseball at those two ladies, so I punched a police officer in the face instead– I think the two ladies got away, so that’s a good job– but then the police started shooting at me, so I shot back, and you know eventually I found this bastard, but this giant metal bird started screaming at us and attacking us, and we managed to get away from him but now we’re still running from the police because the Queen or Prophet or whatever they call her– Eurus– she’s got it in for us now.”

“John,” Holmes deadpans, “has anyone ever told you that you are much better at written storytelling than verbal?”

“Sherlock, you’ve never written anything I’ve read– I can’t ever remember holding a pencil in the first place!”

“I have, actually.”

“Oh, just like you’ve seen me be a doctor?”

“Yes– you’ve been seeing those visions too, I can see it on your face when it happens–”

“And I’m telling you I don’t want to talk about it. So drop it,” John snaps, “You know, for a man as brilliant as you are, you can be so dense.”

My Sherlock laughs her high, mocking laugh. “And you’re telling  _ us _ to stop being so obvious in public?” There must be something in their body language that she’s reading, but I’m too tired to move so I can see it too. 

“Visions?” I mumble instead, “Me too– I’ve been seeing… flashes…”

“As have I,” my Sherlock replies, her tone moving to perfunctoriness and curiosity. “Mr. Holmes, your visions have mostly been of John, right? John, if your dilated pupils and heightened stress response to normal stimuli relating to Sherlock is any indicator, your visions have been mostly related to him– don’t bother denying it, your current expression says it all–”

“You’re pretty when you do that,” I murmur. It makes shivers run up her spine, and that’s even prettier.

“You’re not even looking at me,” she insists.

“Doesn’t matter.”

And then I decide now is probably as good a time as any to lose consciousness. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heyyoooo everybody!! I've got some good news! Since i have finished writing (and now just need to post) my other wednesday fic ("The Hobbit, but the multiverse does the macarena"), I now have time to write and therefore update this fic every week instead of every other week!! woohoo!!!   
> also! the bois are back in town!!! get ready to see more of them!!!
> 
> also also: I think I mentioned a blog I was going to start last time, but also I really don't like writing about myself, so I'm not sure if I'll continue that. that said, I do need to support myself and pay for college. if I started a patreon, would anyone consider subscribing? if so, what kind of rewards would you like to receive? 
> 
> As ever,  
> Scream at me in the comments, nothing brings me more joy!!!


	9. Nose Bleed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He's got a memory that goes back three days, two Sherlocks, and one random girl with a head injury. He might not have a clue why, but he's thinking about it.

If the Sherlocks are right, then the four of us are related somehow, but they’re bickering too much to get to the bottom of it, really. Girl-Sherlock shrugged when we asked her for a last name, and she claims Sherlock is definitely her name. So. Two bastards with the same name and similar mannerisms, just different genders and face. Perfect. 

Girl-Sherlock, it seems, at least cares about Wato. My Sherlock doesn’t seem to care about much of anything. He doesn’t eat, doesn’t sleep, didn’t even seem especially surprised when I came to break him out of that tower. That really wasn’t easy, and I would have appreciated a “thank you,” or something of that nature, but nothing like that ever passes his lips. 

Those two really will go to blows at this rate. I’ve just been ignoring them for a while– and I’m not as good at that as I’d like to be, but I have a memory that goes back about three days, so I can’t exactly help what my current skillset is– but they’re getting heated. Girl-Sherlock is insisting that she’s “not the one who killed fifteen police officers en route,” and my Sherlock is really genuinely  _ trying  _ to rile her up, reminder that she’s killed people too, and Girl-Sherlock mutters something about how that really shouldn’t be thrown around like an insult, because I (and she calls me his boyfriend again, why do they both think we’re dating?) have apparently killed more people than the other three of them combined. That gets under my Sherlock’s skin, and he sniffs unhappily.

“One,” I hiss, “not his boyfriend–”

“Up for debate,” my Sherlock says.

“Ha. Good one,” Girl-Sherlock says.

I roll my eyes and continue, “Two, keep it down. Or do you want the police after us again?” Nevermind that I remember running from the police with Sherlock before, in a different place, with different police. I remember a lot about him, but most of it has to do with him being dead, so I don’t like to think about it too much (the other part I remember is how his skin feels. The two don’t mix well. And Sherlock reads me like a book. Safer not to think about any of it). 

In an instant, Girl-Sherlock is abandoning her bickering with my Sherlock to kneel next to Wato. Wato makes a face and wakes up a moment later.

I start to ask, “How did you know–”

She answers, “I don’t know why, but I have the expression she makes before she wakes up memorized.” Whatever you call the expression on Girl-Sherlock’s face, I hope I can feel it one day.

“Sarah?” Wato mumbles, blinking blearily. I wasn’t able to tell if the cut on her forehead was superficial or a concussion, since she wasn’t conscious, and we weren’t able to wake her up. Apparently I’m a doctor, so I put a good guess in at her either being extremely exhausted or extremely concussed or a mix of both– but, I mean, the cut didn’t  _ look _ too bad, it just bled a lot (and I think most head wounds do, but who really knows)– but there wasn’t a way to tell for certain before she was awake. That said, nobody seems to know who “Sarah” is. The name sounds vaguely familiar to me, but it brings to mind the wrong face. 

Girl-Sherlock, however, takes a solid ten seconds to sit back on her heels, expression blank… I know that look. She’s seeing things. They must be exciting things, because when she comes back from it she grins like the sun just rose and pops to her feet in an excited burst, mumbling about some theory or other. She’s talking too fast for me to catch any of it.

“Sarah?” Wato mumbles again, but Girl-Sherlock– er, I suppose her name might be ‘Sarah’?– is too preoccupied to hear it. “Your name is Sarah, isn’t it?” Wato says, and her voice is growing an accusatory tendril of tone that I’m thinking may be just a bit Not Good. “You told me your name was Sherlock!”

Sarah spins to look at Wato with a glee-filled face. “I  _ did _ , didn’t I!?” she squeals happily. They’re clearly having two entirely different conversations. “Wato!” Sherlock is beaming, and Wato’s frown falters, “I have no clue why I told you that!” Like that’s the most exciting thing in the world. Maybe it is, but my visions certainly haven’t been that positive. 

“You jumped off a building!” Wato suddenly screeches. 

Wait.

What.

_ She _ remembers a  _ different _ Sherlock jumping off a building. 

“I did  _ what!?” _ Sarah cries, disturbingly excited (must be another shared trait for anyone who introduces themselves as Sherlock).

“John?” My Sherlock says. “Your face is noticeably paler than it was a minute ago.” Why the bloody hell can he see that from six feet away? Sherlock’s brain is visibly turning behind his scleras. Why does he care? Something in my bones tells me he doesn’t, not really, and something in that one muscle that sits in my chest making too much noise tells me he really, really does. Sherlock must have come to some kind of conclusion because the tension in his neck hikes out to his shoulders and sits tight there. “Oh, I see,” he says quietly.

I pinch the bridge of my nose. The girls are bickering next to me about why Sarah would or wouldn’t have jumped off of a building (“I would  _ not _ do it just for the fun of it,” Sarah insists. “Then why do I feel like you’ve done stupider things for stupider reasons?” Wato replies). Do we have time for any of this? Aren’t there still authorities trying to hunt us for sport on Eurus’s orders, or whatever? Sod it. We’ll hear them coming, I guess. “What do you see?” I ask Sherlock.

He makes a face crossing a deer in the headlights with a cat on a fence at two in the morning. “You saw the same thing,” Sherlock guesses. I should stop calling it guessing. He’s always right. “That’s why you don’t want to talk about it.”

I don’t bother asking how he knew. I don’t want to know which of my blood vessels contracted a millisecond too fast or by what percentage my pupils dilated or how many centimeters higher I hitched my irritatingly uninjured leg. Even if I think it’s the most amazing thing in the world. Just… not right now. Not for this.

Also, Sarah is trying to pick Wato up to prove some kind of point, and that won’t do. “Alright, what’s this then?” I snap.

Sarah seems entirely unperturbed by my peevishness, although Wato seems upset by it. “I’m just showing Wato that I am perfectly capable of picking a person up.”

“What is it with you Sherlocks and not knowing how to treat the injured!”

Wato wiggles out of Sarah’s arms to stand on her own. The fact that she can do so unassisted really eases my mind about those possibilities of concussion. Just exhausted. That’s one less injured person to travel with. “Yours does this too?” Wato asks.

I half huff, half chuckle. “We fell off that giant statue when that giant metal bird started chasing us–”

“How are you not dead?” Sarah interrupts.

“– I got a knee knocked out of place, and this bastard tried making me run down the beach!”

“I offered to carry you!” Sherlock insists.

“You have a bruise the size of a bowling ball on your shoulder!”

“Wait!” Wato realizes, “Sarah– you got shot! Is your arm alright? Let me look at it.” She unbuttons the cuffs of Sarah’s dress shirt and rolls it up– you’d think the girl and the shirt were both made from tissue paper, the way Wato handles them, but Sherlock’s ears have gone bright red over the touch. Of course, all Wato finds is stitches, since I cleaned up the superficial graze on the outside of Sherlock’s forearm about half an hour ago. “This is clean work,” Wato says, mostly to herself, “John, was this you? Where did you learn how to sew people up?”

“I have no idea,” I admit, “my memory only goes back about three days.”

Wato blinks at me. Like i might have suddenly turned green and started singing the Macarena. “What’s the first thing you remember?” she asks me. Both Sherlocks have turned their eyes on her question. They both clearly know more than they’re letting on, but they both clearly know less than they’d like to. 

I feel my face squish in thought. “A lighthouse. Why?”

“That can’t be a coincidence,” Wato says. “What did the lighthouse look like?” 

I think. I think very, very hard. It shouldn’t be this hard to remember something so significant from three days ago. Every time I think I have a concrete detail, it slips away from me like watercolor paint on an oversaturated canvas. “I… don’t know?”

“Really, John, how can you _not_ _know_ , you were just there,” Sherlock says, rolling his eyes. As if his memory goes on perfectly forever. Maybe it does. I think that is normally how it works, for most people. But not me.

Apparently not Wato either, she’s got a queer look on her face like she’s not sure if she agrees with me or not. 

“Why?” I ask.

Her brow furrows almost angrily. “I… um. I– I can’t remember?” she finally concedes. Her nose is bleeding. That most certainly is not normal. She turns from Sarah and looks around, “Sherlock,” wrong name. She’s been calling her ‘Sarah’ for ten minutes with no trouble, why suddenly switch back? “Sherlock, where am I?”

Sarah misses the significance, probably because Wato isn’t facing her and she can’t see the blood dripping from her nose. “Good question. I’m not sure I know, never bothered to ask– Sherlock?”

Sherlock doesn’t necessarily care that Wato’s nose is bleeding or that she’s clearly disoriented, so he just answers offhandedly, “Columbia. Floating city. Somewhere above the mid-Atlantic about now, I presume.”

“Where’s Detective Reimon?” Wato asks, expression dazed.

“Greg?” I blurt. No. That’s not even close to what she said. I don’t even know a Greg, do I? Certainly not from the past three days I don’t. 

Both Sherlocks gasp in understanding, eyes blowing wide and lips twisting into twin grins.

“The idiots have cracked the code!” Sherlock exclaims. “We just have to be stupider to understand!” He grins in a way that flashes warning signs to me, and begins to visibly try to ‘be stupider.’

Sarah would join in, but she notices Wato wobble on her feet and forgets to be excited. “Wato? Why are you bleeding? I’m not a doctor, Wato, you have to tell me.”

“Huh?” Wato slurs, “Sherlock? Aren’t you dead? Why am I here? I thought we were at home?”

“Wato, you have to tell me, it’s very important,” Sarah insists, “do we live together?” 

“What do you mean?” Wato mutters, “Course we do. Us and Mrs. Hatano.”

“Who?” Sarah asks.

“Mrs. Hudson!” Sherlock bellows– absolutely out of nowhere. That sounds… well, it sounds vaguely familiar. Still have no clue who that is, but vaguely familiar is better than nothing– and oh, Jesus Christ, Sherlock’s nose is bleeding too. At least he has the good sense to sit down before he falls over. “John?” he says that the same way someone else might say ‘help.’ It’s a little endearing. “John, is Rosie alright?” 

“Who’s Rosie?”

“The baby,” Sherlock enunciates, very clearly, like I might miss the whole three syllables. Who’s baby is that? Does Sherlock have children? It didn’t seem likely that he would, given that he apparently spent most of his youth locked in a tower like a fairy tale character. 

I get more confused the more I think about it, so I won’t. Wato is already lost down the rabbit hole– Sarah is trying to pull her back up. Sherlock seems to be getting off on the self-induced confusion. Something tells me he’s done drugs before, but I can’t be sure. That’s the same voice that tells me he jumped off a building and died, but here he is, so we know how much that voice is worth. 

“Why is he like that?” Sarah hisses.

“Oi, you focus on your idiot, I’ll focus on mine,” I retort. “Sherlock? Sherlock, you absolute arsehole, get back here or I’ll–”

“‘M undercover, John,” Sherlock slurs, “remember?”

“No, what does that–” but I do. 

_ had to beat up a crackhead to get his attention but damn was it worth it. he’s doing this on purpose you know he is. why. why. why hurt himself like this. “if he keeps taking what he’s taking at the rate he’s taking it, he’s got weeks.” even when he’s safe I can’t… just can’t… what is he doing in the kitchen again he told me but I never listen anymore who are those people I know them I’ve seen them SarahWatoholyshit–  _

My brain snaps to relative focus when I hear the electric drop of a gunshot. Oh, fuck. The police. Sherlock and Wato seem to have already begun to collect themselves, but that gunshot really kicks things into gear. Wato doesn’t even bother wiping the blood from her chin, we all just run. My bum leg twitches between the spin in my head and the pound of my feet. Sherlock grabs my hand, urging me to run faster, maybe. We sprint through the empty streets of a city quarantined and practically shove ourselves through fences and doors and gates and whatever we can get between us and the entirety of the Columbian military police force. 

When we have a moment to breathe, I stick one accusatory finger out and point at Wato. “ _ You!” _ I cry.

“Me?”

“You, me,” I breathe, “we don’t just know each other– we’re the same person!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hehe we switch to John perspective for the coming chapters, just for my BBC buddiesssssss.
> 
> It should be noted that I haven't watched this show in a while bc my hatred for Stephen Moffat burns with the flame of at least two medium-sized suns. 
> 
> i love u all, thank u for sticking w me on this journey-- ps did yall know this fic was originally a significantly shorter story i wrote down in one of those like 1x3 inch steno notepads in high school while i was bored in class, but then somebody stole the bag it was in bc they wanted to pawn off my graphing calculator and they never gave back the tiny notebook so SOMEBODY is out there with one of my favorite fanfics i ever wrote and they probably threw it away unu but ya
> 
> As always,  
> Scream at me in the comments, nothing brings me more joy!!!


	10. Switching Perspectives

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They're not doing great, and they can't even figure out why. Two old ladies jump in to help.

Sarah, Wato– hell, even Sherlock is looking at me like my head’s not on quite right. But it’s on right and I  _ am right _ . I know it.

“Don’t look at me like that, you all know I’m right!” I say. Sarah’s eyes blink themselves wider, and she seems to get it– not that she’ll help me make my case, she’s gone into her own head the way Sherlocks are apparently all wont to do. 

“I saw– you know, in those flashes– we’ve all been seeing them. I saw us, Sherlock, just for a second and then we looked in a… a mirror? Or something? And we saw  _ them _ . We are them, they are us. We’re the same people from different…” 

Sherlock wrinkles his nose. “Are you implying we are currently  _ exploring the multiverse _ or some other nonsense?” he asks distastefully. “John, you know the only multiverse theory that I subscribe to is Bostrom’s–”

“Yeah, Sherlock, you’ve  _ never _ told me that! Not at any point in the past three days!” I cry heatedly. “Think about it with that stupid, big brain of yours! You and Wato just damn near had a pair of aneurysms trying to remember too far back!  _ Think _ , Sherlock,” I know I’m getting angrier than I mean to be, and the emotion feels like a habitual glove, worn smooth with use, Wato looks a little frozen in place by my screaming. I remember– what do I remember?  _ Think, John Watson, think _ . I reMember someone who wAsn’t afRaid when I Yelled… and soMeOne who got aLL anxious when I Yelled… and someone else… 

Sarah emerges from her thinking earlier than Sherlock and says, “He’s right. Wato, he’s stupid but he’s right. We lived together! We had a landlady– what was her  _ name _ ?”

“Gotta go,” Sherlock mutters suddenly, grabbing my hand with what seems to be a force of habit and dragging me along behind and between buildings, leaving Wato to drag Sherlock and follow. Only after a few seconds do we realize why.

A giant metal bird– the very same one that attacked me and Sherlock yesterday. 

**_DID YOU MISS ME? DID YOU MISS ME? DID YOU MISS ME? DID YOU MISS ME? DID YOU MISS ME?_ **

No, in fact, neither me nor Sherlock missed the giant metal bird with its grating mechanical voice. We certainly don’t miss the way it swoops and dives and claws at us from the sky.

“Why is it whispering like that?” Wato is crying. She’s got her hands shoved over her ears. 

“Whispering?” I reply, “It’s bloody screeching like a drunk man at a dinner party!”

“Sarah, make it stop– make  _ her _ stop.”

“She’s not saying anything, Wato,” Sarah tries to explain while prying Wato’s hands from her ears, “it’s just mumbling.”

“She’s telling me to kill you, Sarah, she’s saying I have to. She said you hurt me. Did you hurt me?”

So, clearly, everyone is hearing different things from this bird. Why though? That’s the million-pound question. 

“John, look,” Sherlock points at the bird. I almost wants to snark at him,  _ what else would I be looking at _ , but then I see the point. The bird isn’t moving normally. Every few seconds it… glitches. Like a computer screen when you spill your tea on it. Nevermind that I can’t remember what a computer  _ is _ , I remember that this is what it  _ looks like _ . 

This isn’t one bird making two noises. It’s two birds each making a noise that only the denizens of one universe can hear. Mine and Sherlock’s **_DID YOU MISS ME?_** seems to be be mildly freaking Sherlock out– if his grip on my hand is to be the judge, but it only makes me annoyed and a little paranoid– but whatever Wato is hearing is making her break down sobbing in the middle of the street, and Sarah doesn’t seem to think the words are even loud enough to hear. 

“Sarah, look–” I start, pointing to the bird.

She doesn’t get time to look.

“That. Is.  **_Enough!_ ** ” a prim voice calls out over the cacophony of metal claws scraping and canvas wings flapping. The bird disappears. The buildings disappears. Everything, in fact, except for the four of us disappears. Two women appear. 

Wato uncovers her ears and heaves a shaky, relieved sigh. Sarah helps her stand.

“Wait, we know you!” Wato says, pointing at one of the ladies. 

Sherlock points at the other, “And we know you!”

“Yes,” the first lady, with dark hair and gray skirt, says.

“You do,” the second lady, with the light hair and flowery shawl, continues.

“And we would all like to go home now,” the first lady says. 

“But these cosmic powers are funny old things, and we can’t get you boys home. You have to do that yourselves.”

“But we can help you remember what home was. You girls seem to have forgotten.”

“ **So now we’ll show you why you are here.** ”

_ Sherlock and John were alone. Eyes glazed. Postures slumped. They dragged through each day. John took care of Rosie, bounced her on his knee and fed her and changed her diapers and put her to sleep and loved her to the other side of the planet and back. Sherlock loved her too, but he wasn’t allowed to do these things. John wouldn’t let him near the baby. Sherlock still took cases, but he left the house alone and he came home alone and he didn’t ask John how many glasses of alcohol had preceded this one. Rosie screamed a lot. All babies scream a lot, but Rosie screamed more than usual. She wanted her mother. Her mother was dead, and had been for over a year, and Rosie was still too young to understand death or who died or even that she’d lost something. But her soul knew it just like John’s knew he needed to put the bottle down and Sherlock’s knew he needed to reach out and everyone knew that the room was far too gloomy. No matter how wide the curtains opened or how many children’s toys and paper trails littered the floor, her death hung over them like a cloud they couldn’t dispel. When Sherlock, at four years old to the day Rosie was born, was allowed to start helping John take care of her, he got worried. John hadn’t been back to see Ella since she gave him that prescription. Sherlock knew, and he was afraid, and he hated that this was happening, but he didn’t know how to stop it so he did what he does best and he set up some experiments in his bedroom with electronics and chemicals and then–  _

_ Sarah and Wato were alone. Faces anxious. Shoulders hunched. They felt the hopelessness of each day weigh on them. Wato’s eyes were dark and wide and red from crying, and Sarah was no better. They avoided each other for months after Sarah came home. She had died. For six months. She couldn’t come home in the ways that really mattered, not as far as Wato could think. Sarah had left, and then she came back, but Wato couldn’t understand what had happened. She had hardly been conscious for it. She remembered the days before Sarah’s death with the clarity of a mud puddle, the moment of her death with razor-sharp recognition, and the months after as a streak of paint across an already-colored canvas. Wato could hardly remember what had happened, but she could remember how it felt. And it hurt. And Sherlock never knew what to do, so it kept getting worse. How do you mend that relationship? How do you bridge what Wato and Sarah did with where they are? They avoided each other for months until Wato moved out. Wato lived alone and she wouldn’t let anybody in. She was living off of her savings, and her savings were going to outlive her. Sarah couldn’t even visit. Couldn’t get past the door because Wato couldn’t drag herself to the door. They both collapsed in on themselves, and they had nothing to do with themselves. Wato quit her job. Sarah tried cases, but they felt so much more grim now that she knew who wasn’t there. So Sarah did what she does best. She set herself down in the kitchen and started an experiment with chemicals and electronics and then–  _

And then here they are. 

“I just got so scared,” Sarah said.

“Everything was going so wrong,” Sherlock said.

“You weren’t okay, Wato.”

“John, you were dying.”

**“And I missed you so much”**

“So, I decided–”

“–that I would fix it”

“All I wanted–”

“The only thing–”

**“I just wanted us to be happy again.”**

“And, I just thought–”

“I just wanted–”

**“Anywhere else.”**

**“Anywhere.”**

Understanding hits them all like a freight train to the right prefrontal cortex. John and Wato’s three-day memory smashes itself together with their lives before, and Sherlock and Sarah’s faux-memories wash away to reveal the truth beneath. 

They had been together– Sarah and Wato, Sherlock and John– and then things had gotten so tangled up by death that they had unintentionally choked themselves on things that weren’t even trying to hurt them anymore. 

They stand there in the artificial-sounding silence for several moments before realizing that Mrs. Hudson and Mrs. Hatano have left them back on the peaceful streets of Columbia once more. 

“We’ve got to get home!” John suddenly cries, “Who the hell is taking care of Rosie right now!?” 

“You’re daughter’s name is Rosie!?” Sarah demands. 

John jerks his head to give her a sharp look, “What about it?”

“About how old is Rosie?” Wato asks, understanding Sarah’s thinking.

Sherlock frowns, “Four years, seven months, and fifteen days– if we’ve truly been here for just three days.” John gives him a look like he’s just fallen in love with him  _ again _ . 

“I think  _ we  _ have,” Sarah says, a smile growing on her face.

Wato nods, “We’ve been taking care of Rosie, she means. Tall brunette girl?” John nods, “Sarah, she’s the one that led me to your safehouse in Rapture!” Wato grins widely.

“What the hell is  _ my _ daughter doing in  _ your _ alternate universe?” John snaps, but he’s mostly just glad she’s alright. 

“How should I know,” Sarah replies.

“And where is she?” Sherlock asks.

“With eighteen other little girls in a safehouse across town,” Wato explains.

John gives them an  _ extremely _ concerned look at that number, but shrugs it off. Who is he to question interdimensional toddlers? “Well, what are we waiting for!?” he cries, “Let’s go get those kids.”

“John, wait,” Sherlock stops him, “we’re wanted fugitives right now– thanks to my lovely sister, we can’t just take them from safety into a gunfight.”

Wato frowns, “What we need is a way to get back home…”

“What about there?” Sarah suggests, pointing to an advertisement for “Holmes’ Labs” in a place a little further into the Emporia District. 

Sherlock nods, “A laboratory would be a good start.”

“So how about this,” Wato says, “we run back, pick up the kids from the abandoned building, run back, and go with them to the lab. John and I can defend outside if the police find us, and Sarah and Sherlock can work inside on doing… whatever you two did to get us into this mess.”

Sounds like a good plan to everyone else.

They start running. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heyyyyyy yall!!!!! we in the homeee streeeetcchhh!!!! only two more chapters after this one!!!  
> to everyone still indulging my weird niche crossover, i love you to death. <3
> 
> also, i did intentionally switch the perspective from first to third person after everyone realizes the past. I felt like that works better thematically? ya know, like they're no longer "limited" by the mental inhibitions of interdimensional travel?? idfk leme know what yall think......... <3
> 
> as always,  
> Scream at me in the comments, nothing brings me more joy!


	11. Kids in Columbia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone is a little certain and a little sappy. Nobody knows what to do about the girls. They'll figure it all out, all of them.

They’re good girls. The doors are all locked and the windows are all locked and the curtains are drawn. The place looks so abandoned that John asks “Are you sure that’s the right place?’ because, now that he remembers his daughter– and what a thing, to forget her!– he knows that she is talkative like her mom, with Sherlock’s penchant for running amok even though she’s not technically biologically related to him. When they get closer,

Sarah sees a little flicker in the curtain of the window, and she knows that someone was peeking behind Circe’s back. By the time they reach the locked front door, they can hear the girls bickering.

“No, Mama Sherlock  _ said _ don’t come out.”

John snickers. “You’re ‘mama’ now,” he tells Sherlock, who rolls his eyes, but also smiles.

“But I saw her! I really really did!”

“I didn’t see her, and I was next to you.”

“Yeah, but you weren’t  _ looking _ , Lisbeth.”

“I’m hungry.”

“You’re a baby, Rosie, you’re  _ always _ hungry.”

“Am not!”

“Are too!”

“No! I’m almost grown up! That’s ‘cause I’m taller than you, Menhit.”

Sherlock smirks at John. “That’s your parenting.”

Sarah knocks on the door in the way the girls all recognize, and it takes lots of bickering and some awkward elbow-knocking noises and a little time before the locks unfasten and the door swings open and Circe is the first to wrap herself like a starfish around Sarah’s waist. The other girls all pile out and form a massive group hug centered on Wato and Sarah– whom they are still referring to as “Mama Sherlock.” (John is only a little disappointed that his daughter still doesn’t recognize him. He’s just happy to see her.)

“What’s going to happen to them all when we go back home?” Wato asks, softly, sympathetically. 

Oh. Shit. Nobody had thought about that yet. Everyone else was still mostly concerned with the still uncertain fact of actually getting home, but Wato’s over here asking “what about after that?” Nobody responds. Nobody really has a clue. Who knows where these girls actually came from. Except… 

“Sherlock,” Sarah asks, “what’s the last case you remember taking before you were here?” 

Sherlock waves a hand, like it’s a trivial thing. “Pfft. Something banal Lestrade tossed my way– couldn’t have been above a six, seven on a good day. Just some missing persons cases, but I hadn’t had time to crack the–” he cuts off abruptly, seeing where Sarah is going with this. “Hadn’t had time to crack the files open,” he eventually finishes. 

“What?” Wato asks. She can’t see where this is headed. 

“How many were in your files?” Sherlock asks Sarah.

“How many wha–?” John sighs. “You can’t be serious,” he mumbles, sounding ten hours more exhausted than he was ten seconds ago.

“Nine,” Sarah says. “Which means you have nine and Rosie.”

“What about me?” Rosie pipes in– not having heard much of the conversation. 

“Nothing, sweetheart,” John replies, on impulse. Rosie’s little face screws up like she doesn’t know why John is talking to her, but she thinks she should. 

“Can’t be a coincidence,” Sherlock mutters.

Sarah scoffs, “Apparently, we’re dimensional twins.df  _ This _ should not surprise you.”

“Fair point.”

“Would anyone care to explain?” Wato interrupts.

Sherlock grins too widely. “We’re each taking nine kidnapping victims home with us– which will look very suspicious to the police, but it will be  _ fine _ .”

“Alright, tone down the sarcasm, will you, Sherlock?” John chides. Sherlock does a funny little eyebrow wiggle that seems entirely out-of-character, but it makes Rosie– who is now watching the grown-ups talk with avid interest– laugh.

Eyes dance between Sherlock, Sarah, Wato, and John. Sarah is the one to say, “Speaking of police…”

“Yeah,” John agrees, “let’s get out of here before someone reports four suspicious-looking adults with a horde of twenty small girls.” All four suspicious-looking adults help coerce the twenty small girls into relative quiet, even though they’re all beyond excited to be going for a walk in the open air– something they are quite certain (even if they’re wrong, and just don’t remember it) they have never done before. Circe wants to talk and Menhit wants to dance and Himiko wants it to rain and Rosie wants Sherlock to do the funny eyebrow thing again. 

It’s a relatively undisturbed walk. Sherlock and John take up the front, because they know the layout of Columbia better, and Wato and Sarah take up the back, because Wato proved some time ago that she can and will level an entire department of the police force if it comes to that. 

But, of course, one of the girls has to be a troublemaker, and it has to be Ama-tan, who wants to see the clouds just a  _ little bit _ better, and wobbles precariously close to the edge of the floating platform of the city. Sarah panics and runs so fast to keep the toddler– and Ama-tan is truly a toddler at nothing older than four– grounded that she overbalances and Ama-tan falls backward and Sarah falls forward and if Wato had any slower reflexes then Sarah might have gone all the way over and fallen and fallen and fallen forever into the clouds. 

It is suddenly and jarringly clear that they have been here before with a different ending. Wato drags Sherlock from the edge by the wrist. Ama-tan is watching them curiously. “Don’t do that again,” Wato murmurs, voice dangerous and low. 

“I wasn’t going to–”

“Don’t. Do. That. Again.” Wato blinks, and then Sherlock sees that these blinks are holding off tears. “Please, Sarah.” 

Sarah nods. 

Up towards the front, the girls have missed the first warning shot of the newest wave of the Columbia Police Force. They aim for John’s chest, though, so it wasn’t really meant as a warning shot. However, somehow, Sherlock is the one to recoil, and he trips on his feet and falls to the ground behind a fruit cart. Wato uses her plasmids to create a barrier in front of the children while they scramble to safety behind buildings and are told, very sternly, to stay put.

John makes an inhuman kind of pained noise, and immediately starts looking Sherlock over for bullet wounds. “Sherlock, if you take a bullet for my sake  _ one more time _ , I’m going to–…” Well, John isn’t sure what he’s going to do, just like he isn’t sure where this bullet wound is, “I’ll do  _ something  _ about it.”

It becomes viscerally and painfully clear that they have been here before with a different ending. 

Sherlock laughs like an idiot and stills John’s hands by holding them. “I didn’t get shot, John. They got my coat, and then I tripped.”

John frowns. Sherlock is certainly telling the truth, there’s no bullet wounds or blood. Not even a bruise. “Then stop scaring me like that, you prick!” 

He turns his head, soldier overtaking doctor, and sees the children, safe, Rosie, safe, Wato and Sarah, safe too. “Wato!” he cries over the ricochet of bullets eating stone, she catches his eye, and he gives her a sideways grin, “I’ll take the left, you take the right?” He motions with his hands so he can still be understood over the noise of the gunfire. 

She laughs, even if he can’t hear it, and nods, and then his gun comes out of his waistband and she steps out from cover and between his bullets and her plasmids and a few minutes, the Columbia Police Force is now going to be hiring another new department in the coming weeks.

They march onward– taking a slightly longer route around the corpses- because that is the last thing these kids need to see– towards Emporia’s “Holmes’ Labs.” The soothing soprano voice of Eurus Holmes occasionally reminds them that they “are a scourge on the city,” or “have corrupted the youth with their sins,” but they know she has no real reason to say these things, just like Wato had no real reason to listen to Moriwaki Akira and Sherlock had no reason to believe he had lived his entire life inside a giant angel statue. 

Sarah notices that she sees Hudson and Hatano out of the corner of her eye, once in a while, but she doesn’t mention it. Just two old women checking in on their non-biological children, and that’s fine. 

John’s leg starts bugging him the more he thinks about all these kids, all those cops, all these dead men– so Sherlock distracts him by annoying him with some abstract mathematical concept that John understands only the irrelevance of. Wato thinks it’s sweet and Sarah also thinks it’s sweet but she pretends she doesn’t. 

When they reach the door of the labs, they find one last obstacle: the doors are locked.

This obstacle is not especially foreboding, because the door is comprised mostly of stained-glass panels which are pretty, but yield very quickly when John shoots one. Sherlock’s coat sleeves are the thickest, so he reaches a hand through the ragged glass edges to unlock the door, and then everyone goes inside. 

Mind palace be damned, Sherlock and Sarah both remember exactly what they did last time to get themselves into this mess, so it takes them a comparatively short amount of time (something like thirty minutes) to replicate it. Of course, they oscillate wildly within these thirty minutes between tense silence and screaming– at each other, at their partners, at each other’s partners, and Sarah (who has less practice and patience with children) slips once and yells at Ama-tan, who almost tripped over an especially thick electrical wire, and Sarah is promptly yelled at by Wato. Sherlock nearly spills a chemical on Wato’s shoulder– because she is “stupidly small”– which gets him yelled at both by Sarah (who uses probably more adjectives than necessary to defend Wato’s appearance, including but certainly not limited to “cute,” “loveable,” and, somewhat suggestively, “fun-sized”) and John (who is hardly taller than Wato, and would like to know if Sherlock thinks  _ he _ is “stupidly small,” which, Sherlock gracefully does not admit aloud, is the  _ last _ thing on Sherlock’s mind when he thinks about John’s physique). Wato, while running around looking for some esoterically-labelled part that one of the Sherlocks has asked her for, trips over Lisbeth, which gets John to yell at her for being careless, and in doing so he cracks a crucial lens (of which they only have three), so both Sherlocks yell at him for that. 

It’s a little chaotic and a little stressful, is the point. 

But they get those damn tears open, and the girls seem to know which tear they each belong to because they are happily unaware that there is more than one. The adults don’t question this because they aren’t trying to give children the same interdimensional migraines they had earlier, they just let the girls believe that there is only one tear, and they let them walk through the “one” they see. If this goes horribly wrong, they know how to make these tears at home now. 

“It’s been a pleasure meeting someone who isn’t entirely dull,” the Sherlocks tell each other.

“Nice to see someone going through the same mess,” John and Wato say to each other. 

And that’s as close to a goodbye as they give each other before they stride confidently through their respective tears. 

(They’ve all always been horrible with goodbyes.)

And then they’re all home. All piled in their respective living rooms. 

Sherlock and John and Mrs. Hudson and Rosie and nine previously-missing little girls who match the descriptions and names in a file sitting on the stove to a tee. 

Sarah and Wato and Mrs. Hatano and nine previously-missing little girls who match the names and descriptions from the file shoved between the couch cushions exactly. 

They’re home.

They’re home.

And they’re going to be alright. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SO. CLOSE. TO. THE. END!!!!!!!  
> yall i want to say, even though we ain't quite done yet: THANK U FOR SHOWING UP EVERY WEEK!!!! i totally understand that this is a really weird concept and a super niche intersection of three disparate fandoms, but ur support is lovely and it keeps me going even when I'm super tired (like now).
> 
> just the epilogue left! let's see if our stupid children learned any valuable life lessons from this adventure next time!!  
> see u in a week! <33
> 
> and, as always:  
> Scream at me in the comments, nothing brings me more joy!! :D


	12. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They live their lives, all of them.

Sarah and Wato are home– with nine little girls following like ducklings, but that’s fine. Sarah has no clue how being followed, by not just nine but  _ nineteen _ little girls, didn’t unnerve her for the three days she experienced or the infinitely-stretching time she thought she remembered in Rapture. Now, she just wants to peel off their wide, innocent eyes that seem to look right through her.

Sarah says they should go drop them off at the station immediately, with a big, dramatic entrance, and maybe scare the living hell out of Shibata, just for the fun of it. 

Wato says, “No, Sarah, these girls have been through enough, and so have we– we just need to come up with a story about how we found them…”

And then there is a small panic for about five minutes because it becomes rapidly clear that the girls don’t seem bothered at all about where they are, how they got here, or where they were less than ten minutes ago. In fact, just like they hadn’t seen the boys’ portal, they don’t seem to remember anything before this room with much clarity. They say they remember a dark, dirty room– the safehouse in Rapture– people without many teeth, with knife hands– the splicers– police chasing them– Columbia– and a metal bird. Collectively, between the nine of them, that is what they remember of the past three days, before that, their memories are even rockier in regards to the kidnapper and the kidnapping, but then they smooth out when asked about their families, friends, and lives before that. 

On the one hand, they remember almost nothing, and they seem to be pliable to believing just about anything Sarah or Wato says. On the other hand, they remember almost nothing, and that means no kidnapper-catching today, and Wato and Sarah will have to wait until they show themselves again for more clues. It’s a mixed bag. Sarah and Wato can’t change any of it, anyways. 

“I’m calling Detective Reimon,” Wato says. If she sounds tired, it’s because she is. The phone rings. 

_ “Wato?” _

“Hey, Detective Reimon, how are you?”

“Do you even know  _ how  _ to have a sense of urgency, Wato?” Sarah hisses. 

“Sh, Sarah, I’m on the phone–”

“ _ Are you with Sherlock right now?” _ Reimon interrupts, “ _ I thought you two weren’t on good terms after–… yeah, Shibata, it’s Wato… I know… well, she’s calling now… calm down, Shibata… yes, Sherlock is with her… yeah, I know she hasn’t been texting us… I don’t know… Shibata, let me finish my phone call. Sorry, Wato, what were you saying?” _

“She’s saying we found the kids!”

“ _ The kids? _ ”

“The kids. From the kidnapping case you gave me. The one with the socks.”

“ _ Yeah, I know the one– Sherlock, you told me you found those kids a few hours ago. _ ”

“What?”

“ _ You texted me. You said– sh, Shibata– you said you were on the way to the station with them, and then you fell off the map. I’ve been texting you since noon.” _

Sarah scampers away from Wato and her cell phone to check her own phone and finds fifteen unread texts and nine missed calls from both Reimon and Shibata.

“ _ I was somewhat worried when I saw you calling, Wato, _ ” Reimon continues, “ _ I thought you were calling because something happened to Sherlock.” _

There’s a small pause, heavy with improvisation, which culminates in Wato saying, “Yeah, she got, um. She got a little in over her head with these kiddos and called me to help. I was just– uh… calling to say we’re on the way to the station now.” She hears Reimon start to form a question, and hastens to finish, “Alright, see you soon– sorry I haven’t called in so long– bye!” and then hangs up as fast as she can to prevent herself from the unarmed attack. 

“Sarah! What were you doing before… before all of that,” and she gestures vaguely to the kitchen, where the artificial ‘tear’ is still flickering away in melancholy effervescence. 

Sarah is a little indignant, “I was–…” but she can’t quite recall immediately. “I was… hang on. That morning, er,  _ this _ morning, according to Reimon… I was tinkering with,” she gestures at the tear, “that thing, and then… there was… I remembered something, what did I remember? Oh! Yes! I remembered what you told me! About children!”

“I’ve told you several things about children.”

“Yes, but this was the important thing about children! And then I found them, and I brought them here first– I wanted to call you and tell you that you’d been helpful because you’d been so sad and I wanted to make you happier–”

“And that’s the sweetest thing you’ve ever said, but please get to the point, Sarah.”

“Oh, alright. We were all at the house, because I convinced you to come over to help me with the children–”

“I remember that part! You pretended to be endangering them so I would come stop you.”

“And you did! Then–… oh! One of the girls plugged that machine in and we all just got… a little… sucked in?”

“Okay,” Wato says, “I remember that too. So that’s the story we go to the police with?”

Sarah takes a while to respond, but eventually ends up grinning in her shark-toothed way and enunciating very clearly, “Sure.” 

So that is exactly what they tell Reimon and Shibata at the station, minus the parts that included being more than 10 miles above or below sea level, and because Sarah is Sherlock they all believe that without a whole lot of fuss (after all, the girls all enthusiastically agree that “Mama Sherlock” saved them from the dark, wet room and the people with the knife-hands and no teeth). Both officers are honestly more surprised to see Wato and Sherlock back together again. After so long apart, so long so desolate, finally  _ smiling _ . 

That’s just fine then, isn’t it? It’s all fine. 

John and Sherlock and Rosie are home– with nine other little girls, but that’s fine.

Sherlock wants to stage a dramatic entrance at the station to return the girls, maybe scare the piss out of Donovan or something, just for fun. 

John says, “No, you bastard, I’m calling Greg right now before you have a chance to traumatize these poor girls anymore.”

Then things go sideways for about five minutes when the boys realize that none of the ten little girls crammed into the sitting room of the flat seem even the least bit concerned about where they are, or how they got there– but we’ve all seen this part, so we won’t bore ourselves with explaining it again. 

They talk to Lestrade, who is adamant that he spoke to Sherlock this morning and pissed that Sherlock never texted him back, they realize what, exactly, had happened before Columbia, they drop the children off with enough of a cover story to not draw undue attention to the 3-hour (or, from their perspective, 3-day) interim, and they return home with Rosie, who is just happy to be included. As before, Lestrade, Molly, and (to a significantly lesser extent) Donovan and Anderson, are much more surprised that Sherlock managed to bring John back around than they are unnerved by the duo’s strange case-solving methods. It’s just a little soul-settling to see John and Sherlock, together, against anything and everything– with a baby bouncing between them, being at least a few inches taller than she ought to be at her age and grinning too widely at kidnapping victims. 

They go home. John, Sherlock, and Rosie. 

John and Sherlock start going on cases together again, and Mrs. Hudson is more than happy to babysit. Unfortunately, by the time Rosie is nine, and very precocious, like her mother, and very stubborn, like her dad, and very sneaky, like her other dad, she starts slipping away while Mrs. Hudson assumes she’s laying down for a nap and following her dads to crime scenes– and John puts his foot down. Then Sherlock lifts him bodily off the floor, foot and all, and they come to the agreement that Rosie is only allowed on cases that are not extremely graphic, and they have to be below a seven (anything higher is clearly done by someone with a specific motive, and they’ve seen what people with specific motives do to bystanders–  _ Did You Miss Me? _ )

John and Sherlock (and Wato and Sarah) don’t get married for a long while, not until some one or other of them has a call that is too close, and they both agree that they don’t want to be lowered into a grave without the whole world knowing that they didn’t hide– not from criminals and not from their pasts and not from themselves either. Sherlock’s parents walk him down the aisle, and Harry shows up, but just to the reception and she’s hammered as shit anyway, and Rosie plays both flower girl and ring bearer at nearly fourteen years old– and she even gets to pick the colors of their ties for their suits (because they didn’t care much, but she  _ really _ did). Mary’s photograph sits in Rosie’s lap for the whole thing, and when Rosie stands up to dance with her dads she sets it on a chair, and a little bird lands on it and then flies away when Rosie tries to coax it to eat some cake or sit on her finger. “Your mother was just like that,” John tells Rosie, and they’ve told Rosie enough stories about her mother that she laughs at that. 

Mary’s picture comes with John and Sherlock to Rosie’s graduation from high school, and then to her graduation from college with a degree in nanotechnology, with an emphasis in biotechnology in the brain, and it’s in John’s breast pocket when he and Sherlock walk Rosie down the aisle, when their hair is gray and hers is done up beautifully. 

Sherlock and John never retire. They chase bad guys until they can’t really walk as fast as the bad guys can, and then they work from home and occasionally show up at crime scenes to laugh inappropriately and terrorize the new police recruits who haven’t yet met those two crazy old men who live in 221B Baker Street.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> asdjfasdjfkl WE MADE IT YESSSSS!!!!!!! Guys! OMG! if you're still here, thank you so much for indulging my weird as fuck crossover fic that genuinely has no place existing but kinda i just really think it *should* because ????? but you guys are just wonderful and your comments (from like the three people who do comment consistently, and who therefore own timeshare in my soul) bring me so much joy, and everyone who reads this is another person I love. you guys are amazing. without you, I genuinely would have left this fic to rot in the unfinished hallways in my head. for any of you who have been with me since the previous iteration of this fic, the one without Miss Sherlock in the hullabaloo, you guys are just amazing and wonderful. i love you all so much. <3333333
> 
> I also want to be really clear that if anyone sees this and thinks they can do a crossover similar to this better, please tell me where they're posting it, bc i think this concept deserves better than i can communicate it.   
> I also want to specify that I made this partially for the express reason that I hate Stephen Moffat. Fuck that guy. Fuck season four and, to a lesser extent, season three. (*dragged away from the mic, muttering "homophobic-ass motherfucker with his shitty plot-rendering and dumbass fucking bullshit"*) 
> 
> Anyway!!! Thank u for doing this with me. <3
> 
> Want to see what my next Wednesday-fic will be??? Check me out on Tumblr, where I'll keep you in the loop about all my future fics and updates! [ https://bmgh-writing.tumblr.com ]
> 
> (one last thing, just thought the outline for this last chapter was too funny not to share: they at home. They gay. Enjoy it. Make it fluffy. Very little angst here pls. But i won’t give strict instructions cause this like ur reward chapter. Go crazy. Go stupid. Who tf cares wut r they gonna do?? Riot??? This is MY hot girl summer.)
> 
> As always,  
> Scream at me in the comments, nothing brings me more joy!!! :DDDDD

**Author's Note:**

> On the tenth day of Ficmas the author gave to me: ten reasonable questions nine gangsters planning, eight weeks with Eri, seven scheduled seconds, six possible meetings, five connected AUs, four male mistresses, three useless lesbians, two dumbass heroes, and a start to a Supernatural thing!


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